Mick Jagger Says Fans Don’t Want Political Lectures at Concerts (VIDEO)
Mick Jagger has a pretty simple view of what fans want when they buy a concert ticket.
They want a show. They want fun. They want to get away from the noise for a couple of hours.
The Rolling Stones frontman made that point during an interview on The New York Times podcast, where host David Marchese brought up Bruce Springsteen and the way Springsteen has used his current tour to take aim at President Trump.
Marchese said Springsteen “clearly sees his job as engaging in a meaningful back and forth” with his audience. He then asked Jagger how he sees his own connection with fans.
Jagger’s answer was direct.
“The bottom line of my thing really is that my job in the live music world is [for] those people that come is to have the best time they possibly can,” Jagger said.
“For two hours or whatever it is, to forget all their problems and the problems of the world and their mortgages and whatever, just to give them the best time they can have.”
That is a very different approach from turning the stage into a political platform. Jagger, 82, compared a concert to a sporting event, where people are locked in on the moment and not thinking about the rest of life’s headaches.
“It’s similar to going to a sports event, really, because everything else is shouted out,” he continued.
“You’re just watching who’s going to win. You’re not worrying about everything else.”
Then he summed it up in plain language.
“You don’t want to lecture them,” he added.
Watch the clip below:
https://x.com/TheChiefNerd/status/2075958465814511920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Jagger also said performers should understand the crowd in front of them instead of treating every audience like it is the same room with the same mood.
“Your job is to make them have the best time they possibly can,” he said.
The comments come as Springsteen has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration during his “Land of Hope and Dreams” tour. He has called it “reckless” and “treasonous.”
Springsteen also released a song that referred to “King Trump” and his “federal thugs” after the deaths of anti-ICE protesters Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Trump fired back on Truth Social, calling Springsteen a “dried-up prune” and urging supporters to boycott the singer’s tour.
Jagger did not say politics should never appear in music. In fact, he said he sometimes works political lines into songs that are mostly about something else.
“I’ve got into this habit of doing songs that are about personal relationships, and then I throw a verse about politics in there,” he said.
But he also made clear there is a limit.
“Nobody wants to hear a whole song about politics,” Jagger added.