Joe Satriani has shared the stage with some of the biggest names in rock, including Mick Jagger who recruited the guitarist for his solo tour in 1988. (UCR)
“He loved doing that,” Joe Satriani explains. “It seemed like once a month we would find a bar somewhere and we would make a deal with the local band that we would just walk in and take over their gear. And if we needed to bring an extra guitar, we would. But pretty much we plugged in to whatever they had.”
For Satriani, watching the Rolling Stones frontman perform in such an intimate setting was a joy.
“It was always great, just to see Mick turn it on when he’s literally 12 inches away from the audience and they can touch him and everything,” the guitarist admits. “And he loved playing blues songs and rock and roll favorites and stuff. We all got a kick out of it.”
“The whole thing was crazy,” he continues, “because we’d pull up in these SUVs all clandestine like, you know because of Mick. He’s such a famous person he had to be handled very carefully. But he loved it, he just loved being with people, he loved performing and to just stand next to him while he exuded this positive rock and roll energy was just, oh man it was worthy every second. It was just amazing.”
“I stood next to him on the stage at the Tokyo Dome in front of 95,000 people and in front of this little club where people, where there couldn’t have been more than 80 or 100 people totally packed into this teeny thing. Stage was about six inches high. He loved it though,” the guitarist recalls. “Doing ‘Little Red Rooster’ in a little club like that, everyone’s drinking and having a great time. It was fun. We’d go in there, play for 45 minutes and run out. And then go have a party back at the hotel (laughs).”
Recently The Rolling Stones play secret London jazz club gig in celebration of Charlie Watts - Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood played rhythm and blues classics in celebration of their late drummer.
Rolling Stones frontman talked with The Washington Post about the low-key way he documents his excursions to local spots and tourist attractions on social media
In an era where social media is used to facilitate and exaggerate wealth, celebrity, and status, Mick Jagger has used it to position himself as one thing he’s never really seemed to be — a regular guy who loves taking a stroll and visiting tourist attractions.(Rolling Stone- Washington Post)
“Local people tell me that that’s a popular dive bar when I get there. In normal times, I would go into the bar and spend time in there. But, you know, I didn’t want to do that because of COVID. So I just went outside.”
Jagger’s been on Instagram since 2019, but this fall his activity really picked up as he documented his various outings during the Rolling Stones’ No Filter tour. There he was in front of the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, outside a junkyard in Nashville, sipping a beer at a Charlotte, North Carolina, saloon, where no one seemed to know or care who he was. In a new interview with The Washington Post, Jagger spoke about his Instagram habit and its intersection with how he fills his downtime while on the road.
Some planning goes into Jagger’s excursions because, as he put it, “each town has something of great interest, whether it’s a beautiful park, or a lovely picture, or a museum that’s interesting to you, or some odd thing that you never thought of.” Ultimately, though, he said he’s just trying to “get a vibe of where the place is,” and that his low-key Instagram aesthetic reflects the way his posting is less about vanity and more about keeping a diary of the places he’s been.
Jagger said he usually takes one security guard with him, and maybe a member of the Stones’ backing band will join him (not Keith Richards, though — “I think he has a different approach to how he handles being on tour,” Jagger said). While sometimes people will spot him out and about, he noted that being masked during the pandemic has made him less recognizable.
