Mick Jagger says one guitarist’s live performance is ‘the best thing he has ever seen’

A guitarist’s gig attended by The Rolling Stones frontman, Mick Jagger, is the “best thing he has ever seen”.

The (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction and Wild Horses songwriter shared his love for the musician in a lengthy interview spanning the early years of his life, all the way through to his at-the-time current tour. His love of 1960s rock and roll was made clear when Jagger shared he loved the act from “the moment I saw him”. Though the vocal range left Jagger wanting more from the legendary musician, the music itself was some of the best Jagger has heard live. He shared that the mix of being a “blues performer and a rock player” was incredible, and the added “English touch” seen in his act was what sealed the performance as one of his all-time favourite experiences.

Jagger said: “I loved Jimi Hendrix from the beginning. The moment I saw him, I thought he was fantastic. I was an instant convert. Mr. Jimi Hendrix is the best thing I’ve ever seen. It was exciting, sexy, interesting.

“He didn’t have a very good voice, but made up for it with his guitar. I first saw him at the Revolution Club, in London. I was one of six people in the club, and Jimi was playing. I couldn’t believe it.

“It was insane – so good and the whole idea of this kind of English band behind him, this bizarre mixture between a blues performer and a rock player with an English touch.”

Jagger was full of praise for another 60s star, calling Bob Dylan a “guru of lyrics” in the same interview. He told Rolling Stone Magazine founder Wenner: “The lyricist who was really good at the time was Bob Dylan.

“Everyone looked up to him as being a kind of guru of lyrics. It’s hard to think of the absolute garbage that pop music really was at the time. And even if you lifted your game by a marginal amount, it really was a lot different from most everything else that had gone before in the 10 years previously.”

He did, however, note Like a Rolling Stone, a song The Rolling Stones would cover on their Stripped album, was “nonsense”. He said: “A lot of it was perhaps not as good as we thought, but at the time, it was fantastic. Gates of Eden and all these Mexican-type songs, even the nonsense ones: Everybody Must Get Stoned and Like a Rolling Stone, Positively 4th Street.”