Mick Jagger was one of the most important musicians to lead the “British Invasion”, which, with bands like The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and The Who, conquered music markets all over the world, including the United States, changing the course of Rock and Roll music in the 1960s.
The Stones and The Who, both formed in London, were part of the same music scene and had the chance to see each other rise to fame. Over the decades, Mick Jagger spoke many times about the band and its main songwriter and guitarist, Pete Townshend, giving his opinion on them.
Mick Jagger’s opinion on Pete Townshend and The Who
“I always loved Pete. He’s very bright, always thinking. He had this insane, rebellious, self-destructive streak. The first time we traveled with him, we were on the same plane going somewhere like Belgium. He got on the plane and got completely drunk in an hour – drunk and crazy. We just watched. But I love Pete. He was an exciting performer in the heyday of the Who,” Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone in 1995.
The Rolling Stones‘ have always been Townshend’s favorite band and he is a big fan of Mick Jagger, having said in his autobiography “Who I Am” that the singer was the only man he seriously considered going to be with. “We were scheduled to support The Rolling Stones in Putney at the end of December 1963 and I was prepared to be cynical; without hearing them play, I’d decided their reputation must be based on their hairstyles. Instead I was blown away. Our producer, Glyn Johns, introduced me to Brian Jones and Mick Jagger, who were courteous and charming.”
He continued:
“From the side of the stage I watched them play and became an instant and lifelong fan. Mick was mysteriously attractive and sexually provocative, possibly the first such talisman since Elvis. (…) I remember Kit bringing Mick Jagger to Chesham Place and playing him ‘Magic Bus’, which I was working on at the time. Although Mick was a friend, I was concerned by the thought that Kit (Lambert – The Who producer and manager) might be collaborating with our most serious competition. I was also suspicious he was having a sexual dalliance with Mick, and felt a little jealous. Mick is the only man I’ve ever seriously wanted to f*ck.”
“He was wearing loose pyjama-style pants without underwear. As he leaned back I couldn’t help noticing the lines of his c*ck laying against the inside of his leg, long and plump. Mick was clearly very well-endowed. It reminded me of a photograph I’d seen of Rudy Valentino similarly displaying his equipment. In the band we all started to arrange our parts in such a way, especially on stage or in photographs,” Pete Townshend said.
After the release of the book, Pete was asked about what he had said, and he replied that Keith would not be bothered by it. “It’s just fun. We are good friends. Mick hasn’t come back to me, and he wouldn’t bother. We talk about much more serious things than that. I very much doubt that he had a five-second anxiety about what Keith said about his d*ck either – a man who has sh*gged some of the most beautiful women in the world isn’t going to worry about that. ‘Oh, wasn’t I big enough, dear?” I better ask the next 10,000 women,’” Pete Townshend told Mark Blake in 2012.
The 2 songs Pete Townshend recorded with Mick Jagger
Mick and Pete have been good friends since the 1960s and in 2001, The Who guitarist and songwriter played on his solo album “Goddess in the Doorway”. He was invited by Mick to play on the tracks “Joy” and “Gun”. “That’s why I thought of him to be on it (Bono from U2). I wrote it and thought this could be something he could do really well. He takes it on very quickly. And Pete Townshend plays on it too, and he’s another guy that’s spiritually inspired.”
“I like Joy because it conveys the happiness in creation through gospel combined with rock, without being beholden to a gospel form. Making rock music into gospel is something I’ve never done before, I’ve always gone into gospel,” Jagger said about the song “Joy” featuring Pete, in an interview with Paul Du Noyer in 2001.
Since the 1960s, the Rolling Stones and The Who have had the chance to share festival bills, and in 1969, Pete’s band was invited to take part in “The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.” Jagger has seen the band perform live on multiple occasions and once revealed a lesson he learned from them.
The lesson Mick Jagger said he learned from The Who
“I mean, if things are not going too well in that group of people, I feel I don’t want to stand still and wait for the problems to go away and wait for everything to come around and for everyone to be in the right mood. Also, I don’t particularly want to go on tour when things are not going well. I think it’s a mistake, I learned a lesson from the Who being on the road when they were not getting on. I hated seeing it.”
“It embarrassed me and made me feel sad. And I don’t want to see the Rolling Stones like that – onstage and getting on badly. I don’t see the point of it. When you’re not getting along, don’t push it in public. In a recording studio, fine. But I don’t want to see that onstage. I think it’s washing your dirty linen and so on,” he said in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1987.
Two years later, in 1989, Pete Townshend was the one responsible to induct the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. During his speech he described them as the “first Rock band. I mean, real Rock band. They had the sound, they had the image and they were dangerous”
The time when Keith Moon broke into Jagger’s hotel room dressed as Batman
Keith Moon wasn’t nicknamed “Moon the Loon” for nothing. The musician did some really wild things during his career, not only on stage but off stage as well. He trashed many hotel rooms, putting his own life in danger and other people’s lives at risk too. Once, as told by Jagger, on Howard Stern‘s show in 2021, the drummer broke into his hotel room dressed as Batman.
“Keith was a complete lunatic. I was in LA in a hotel once, asleep, and he broke into my room dressed as Batman. I woke up and there was Batman in front of me, with a mask and everything. It is not what you expect in the middle of the night. I think I had a knife, at least some sort of defensive weapon. So I pulled the knife and he said, ‘Oh no, it’s Keith’. I said, ‘You’re not Keith… I can tell you are not from your voice’. No, Keith Moon’. Then he took the mask off. He came up the fire escape. [He was] a nutcase,” Mick Jagger said.