Mick Jagger shares how he prepares for a Rolling Stones concert

Veteran frontman and Grammy Awards winner Mick Jagger has shared how he prepares for The Rolling Stones‘ gigs.

Jagger, 81, has been touring with the band since the early 1960s and shows no signs of stopping. His preparation for concerts has changed over the years, and in a conversation with Rolling Stone Magazine founder Jann Wenner, Jagger shared what he has replaced and kept in his lead-up to gigging. Part of the preparation comes from taking a look at the audience before the show starts, with Jagger figuring out the mood of the show through the opening act, and how to perform depending on audience reaction. He does this before even stepping onto the stage, he says, and in his outline of pre-show rituals, suggests he would “hate” to be an opening act.

He told Wenner: “I like to have a peek, see what the audience is doing during the opening act, because it gives you a clue and gives you a good feeling of where you are – the air can be different in different places.

“And I like to see the place before, because some of them are very wide, and they’re much more difficult to play, because they tend to be baseball places, because they get so wide you have to work a lot more the outlying part of it. Because that’s where the majority of people are.”

Jagger also suggested the age of the audience and seating arrangements played a big part in how he and the band would perform. He added: “Is the front section empty? Because that usually means that they’re older and want to just show up at the time we go on.

“Or are they there only for the opening act or something? And just how do they respond? How loud they are, how enthusiastic they are. Of course, that’s the opening act, too. Depends how good they are, whether they can communicate with them, which is not very easy. I’d hate to be a fucking opening act. You get out there, and you feel the temperature of it, really.”

Energy levels are a crucial part of the pre-show ritual too, though Jagger says even at his most fatigued he can still find the power needed to perform. He shared: “My energy’s usually pretty good. Sometimes I think, ‘Oh, Jesus, do I really have to go on now?’ You have to finally switch into the fact that you’re just about to go on, because before it can be unreal.

“As you walk down to the stadium from the dressing room, you start to buzz a little bit. And you hear the audience, what their response is when the music starts. And then just before we go on, just while the music’s really warming up, you get an extra buzz then.”