Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 265

Evening Standard Thursday 15 November 2001 25 Features just produced a film about to release a solo album and now in a fly-on-the-wall documentary Trouble is says Lesley Garner only the Mick that Mick Jagger wants us to see plicated and we could bang on about it for ever but because English movies are made in English a very strange animal and the French movie industry is very different because very obviously Hmm In his private life at a dangerous age two years away from a bus pass divorced from Jerry Hall his partner of 24 years and linked with a whole series of girls in his age group the very model of the kind of man he should be warning them against nothing cool about being an old lech In Being Mick a fly-on-the-wall documentary Jade is shown flinging her arms around him laughing and wailing: girls younger than me Dad Please" But as her dad says grinning have the ordinary bohemian artistic attitude to love and very charming being an old bohemian but view of himself Being Mick is directed by Kevin McDonald a respected documentary maker but it is produced by film production partner Victoria Pearman and it is a Jagged Films production ie Mick It may be fly-on-the-wall but you get the feeling that Mick has chosen and decorated all the walls Marianne Faithfull had a different view straight uncomplicated action regarding emotional life is almost impossible for Mick to she said very English in that not allowed to feel Or as Jerry Hall puts it: sure find someone else to be unfaithful to soon Poor Mick got such lovely qualities I hope he changes He probably will very smart hard for him He has this Dionysian thing going on women throw themselves at him really smart women got this magnetic draw really got something Ah yes The Dionysian thing Or is it more a fertility God thing? I seem to have got this big extended he says bemused as though he found them under gooseberry bushes I adore But sometimes the adoration has come after disputing both the paternity and the price of fatherhood Over the years having children got Mick into most trouble or rather the haggling over acknowledging and paying for them The women were driven by the sense of injustice inherent in dealing with a fabulously rich father refusing to pay his whack Marsha Hunt who was offered £17 a week to support daughter Karis said: talking about a minute amount of money to someone who earns a Bianca Jagger who declared her marriage dead on the morning of her wedding when Mick suddenly produced a prenuptial agreement called him Continued on next page' COOL people leave others in their wake gasping Cool people stop to explain One reason cool people are cool is because they simply give a damn what anyone else thinks of them For a very long time Mick Jagger has been a prince of cool He set styles did what he wanted to whomever he Chose and paid later (often with some rather uncool legal squealing and kicking) When he gave interviews journalists stumbled away charmed but baffled by the mischievous smokescreen of mimicry and faux inarticulacy Mick Jagger gave away only as little as he wanted to give Which makes it all the more odd that all of a sudden that cool facade seems to be crumbling The despair of interviewers is suddenly Is Mick Jagger going through a midlife thaw? And if so who has turned on the heat? There are plenty of reasons for sudden availability He has a new solo album Goddess in the Doorway and his record company is nervous about selling it to kids the age of children so set up a website the it says solemnly Jagger has been many things rock superstar sex symbol cultural revolutionary musical poet tabloid subject and all around pop culture provocateur" A few steps ahead of Britney Spears then but would you care if you were 15? Even Jagger's children think uncoal kids find me embarrassing all the time" he said say have got totally embarrassing clothes on You come to the school open day not with those trousers But Jagger is also trying to reach whole new audiences as a film producer When his first film Enigma came out he seemed to have given more interviews than the star Kate Winslet while still managing to be enigmatic to offer more than he actually delivered think movies in this country very com- -4- Mick with Jerry in 1987.