Mick Jagger and David Bowie may be two of the greatest rock stars in history, but the pair had a competitive streak with one another. Bowie would shock the world with characters like Ziggy Stardust and The Thin White Duke while Jagger would front The Rolling Stones and receive plaudits the world over.
While the two may be very different in style and sound there was one period where Jagger found himself directly competing with Bowie, because the Young Americans hitmaker had adopted a tone and style that was “very Stones-y.” Jagger, speaking with Conan O’Brien, confirmed the period that had him feeling like he had to keep up with Bowie and how it affected his work.
Jagger would jokingly tell Bowie at the time that he had “nicked all my things” and was providing work which was on par with and similar to The Rolling Stones’ output at the time. Bowie’s Jean Genie character, which featured on the Aladdin Sane album, was the character Jagger took issue with most of all.
He told O’Brien: “David was so competitive, much more competitive, I was made competitive by David. He was just so competitive and I had to be competitive back. David went through all these different iterations, there isn’t one David Bowie. There’s kind of like a slowly evolving David Bowie. There’s jump cuts to another David Bowie, another style.
“When he was doing Jean Genie, he was very Stones-y. That was a very Stones-y period and so he would come over and play me Jean Genie.” Bowie would defend the work as a “homage” to the band rather than a straight rip of their work.
He would play songs from the album, which hadn’t released at the time, and kept telling Jagger he had “cut a hit” song. The Jean Genie in particular was played to Jagger at the time, who was open to hearing the song.
But he recalls that, after hearing it the first time, he couldn’t get over how similar it was to The Rolling Stones’ work. Jagger said: “God, you nicked all my things.” Bowie replied: “Yeah I know man, I know. But it’s like a homage to you.”
Jagger and Bowie would work together occasionally in the 1980s, most famously for the song Dancing in the Street. Their cover of the Marvin Gaye-penned track followed covers from Van Halen, Grateful Dead, and The Kinks. The duo teamed up to record the song to raise money for Live Aid and the pair had originally planned to perform the song together. Bowie, who was in the UK to perform, had planned to perform with Jagger, who had been in the US for the same Live Aid event.
With neither artist willing to mime the song, the plans for a live collaboration fell through. Neither Jagger nor Bowie ever performed Dancing in the Street live.
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