Mick Talks

Mick Jagger opens up about journeying through the past for the career-spanning Rolling Stones exhibition, “Exhibitionism.”

- Stephen Mooallem

“WELCOME TO THE PALM SPRINGS retirement home for genteel musicians,” quipped Mick Jagger from the stage during the first of two headlining gigs with the Rolling Stones at the Desert Trip musical festival in Indio, California. This past year was the premier one for Desert Trip, engineered by the organizers of Coachella as a pair of blockbuster boomer-rock weekends in October; the event was immediately rechristened “Oldchella” for a lineup that also featured Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, the Who, and Roger Waters of Pink Floyd, with nary a performer under the age of 60 (most, in fact, were in their 70s). The crowd, though, was varied—a mix of age-appropriate diehards and younger fans—and the festival, by most accounts, was a success, drawing more than 75,000 people over six evenings and grossing an estimated $160 million (or almost twice as much as Coachella itself in 2015). “I still want a challenge, and doing things like Desert Trip is a challenge,” Jagger, 73, tells me on the phone from Los Angeles, where he has retreated between shows. “There are great people on the bill, and it’s a special weekend. So that sets up a challenge for you, and you just want to give it your best shot and try to please everybody and make everybody have a great time,” he explains. “You know,” he adds, “that’s really one of my roles in life.”

At this point, Jagger and his bandmates Keith Richards and Charlie Watts have spent considerably more time on this earth as Rolling Stones than not. Even Ronnie Wood, who replaced Mick Taylor, who replaced original guitarist Brian Jones, has been a Stone for more than four decades. As a measure of longevity for a rock band, the Stones’ ongoing 54-year run is virtually unprecedented—even among Desert Trip performers.