Chris Jagger

SEEN YOUR BROTHER, BABY?

No Filter? No problem! Chris Jagger Steps Out with a Brand New Book & Record

BY LEE VALENTINE SMITH

AS THE ROLLING STONES crisscross the United States on the latest leg of their No Filter tour, playing hits and album tracks to thousands of adoring fans every few days, the brother of band’s lead singer is leading a much more low-key publicity campaign. Chris Jagger has been recording sporadically since the early ‘70s, with an impressive, genre-defying catalog of diverse album projects. Thanks to pandemic delays, his latest longplayer, Mixing Up The Medicine, arrives at the same time as his book Talking To Myself, a semi-memoir, mega-memory play of musical adventures and international travels. The album forges his own distinct musical path, following folk-based Cajun influences and wonderfully out of time diversions. A solid bookend to his ’73 debut, Jagger’s use of poet Thomas Beddoes’ poems for a few songs adds to the overall esoteric groove, mixing ska, pop, soul and hipster jazz, dispensing a therapeutic sonic treatment. The inclusion of the satisfying howl of “Hey Brother,” resonates as an homage to the brothers’ undeniable family ties. INsite spoke with Jagger by phone from his home in Somerset, England.

The book contains a lot of information and memories. It’s a massive tome. How did you cull all those years into something that actually makes sense? To tell you the truth, I haven’t really opened it since it was published, because I can’t really look at it. I did about 10 revisions of it, so it did my head in a bit. But you only get one chance to write your life history.

What was the process like for recalling all of those moments? Sometimes it’s painful for people to look back on their own life. I just skipped the painful bits. Obviously, there are some very personal things and all that. But the thing is, if it’s your own book, you can talk about what you want. It’s not a therapy session. I started writing it quite a long time ago. It’s rather like some very slow burning thing. The hard process is editing. In the end, what to leave out and trying to have a storyline isn’t easy. So it is a bit rambling, to some extent. But true to the title, it is very much as if you are talking to yourself. Yeah, I said to the editor and people, ‘Look, I’m writing this stuff. There’s no ghost writer. It’s not going to be perfect. So if you try and make it so correct and perfect, it won’t work.’ What you can say, and what you can’t say, in these days of political correctness, is a bit of a pain in the ass, really.

Right, the whole PC movement affects everybody. But especially in the arts, musicians and comedians should be the ones who can truly express themselves without fear of repercussion. It should be, because they have the truth. There was that guy, the comedian who just died the other day. He was 90, that American comedian.

Oh you mean Mort Sahl? Yeah, him. I read that he said something like, ‘Is there anyone in the audience, or any minority group in the audience that I haven’t offended yet?’ It’s kinda like with “Brown Sugar.”

Right, what do you think about the socalled controversy over that that song? Well it’s not politically correct. But it never was when they did it. A bit on the edge, wasn’t it? But then what about all that rap stuff? Obviously, you don’t really want to offend people. I’d use some term and they’d say, ‘Oh no, you can’t say that now. It’s not allowed.” But then, every other year, the names change. So it’s become a bit of a banana skin, isn’t it? Every time, I was like, ‘Ok, this is the final revision.’ Then I’d reread it and I’d go, ‘Well this is crap, too.’ Then I had to do another revision.

That’s a lot of work. You’ve got to stick up for how you see it. For instance, in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, I wrote a column that went out to a few magazines about what was happening in London, music and happenings. I included it in the book; it was one whole chapter at one point. I wish I’d kept it in because music threads in and out of the whole story, from beginning to end. It’s an interesting line of how music has come in and out of my life, over the years. Like I sometimes say, ‘I didn’t choose music. Music chose me.’

It’s a big part of your family history, obviously. Yeah, people say, ‘Well, why do you do music, when your brother’s this famous musician?’ And to that, I can say, ‘Well, I dropped it for a bit.’ But then, you keep coming back to it and a lot of your mates are musicians. You hang around and play music, it’s just there. In the ‘90s. I hadn’t made a record for a long time. That’s when I made the album Atcha. It had a Cajun influence and it had a little bit of a swing thing to it. It wasn’t a straight ahead 4/4 guitar, bass, band type music, such as you might’ve expected or what was even popular at the time. But you tread your own path. Although I play music as my brother does, my music is quite different. It’s not guitarbased riffs and all that stuff.

Your catalog has never been hindered by any certain trend. Right, you know I was playing last night. It was just a three-piece and I was in the middle. I had two fiddles on either side of me and we had accordion, too. I got hooked on that Cajun stuff in the ‘90s. Where it comes from, to me, it doesn’t matter. What I’m saying is - and I think this is true in the book, as with the record - I’ve had trouble with my own roots, but I’ve also been influenced by all the people around me.

Travel and music are the two best ways to learn about life, the world and yourself. Yeah, I express that a little bit in the book. I’ve been influenced by many people and many different places. I’m lucky enough to have known some intelligent and kind people who have helped me on my own trail. Because you can’t do it on your own. If you go off traveling, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Everybody is new. You don’t know where you’re going to stay that night. You don’t quite know who you’re going to meet. It’s an adventure, isn’t it? The new album, Mixing up the Medicine, is definitely a musical adventure. The video for “Anyone Seen My Heart?” turned out really nice. It’s rather old fashioned. I didn’t have anyone to sing harmonies. So I wanted to get Mick to come and sing on something. I like the voices of brothers singing together.

In the video, it looks like you guys are sitting around writing a song. Do you actually have a way to do that with him? Do you even have time to work on material? No, but it would be nice to do a whole album together. He’s too busy with his band, what are they called? Um, The Rolling Stones, I believe.

Oh yeah, them. They take up too much of his time. I think he should mellow down a bit. My stuff is much more mellowed down than his jumping up and down and all that shit. I’m happy with a couple of violin players. But for me, I do think people are finally going, ‘Well hold on a minute. This guy’s done a few albums. Maybe we should give him a bit of time.’ Obviously, being the fact that Mick is my brother has not always been an easy straw to pull. But I say, you just get on with what you’ve got. That’s the hand you’re dealt and you go on with it. You’ve got to look on the positive side of it. My brother, what he’s done with the Stones, they’ve made some great albums, some good songs. So now you’ve got to match up to that, right? If you fall very far short of that, people are gonna say, ‘Oh well, he’s a bit of a joke.’ So it’s a real challenge. But a challenge is not always a bad thing. It makes you improve on those skills and try to develop your own abilities. I think it’s a lesson for a lot of people. Maybe your abilities aren’t that of, let’s say, internationally known musical geniuses, right? But if you work on something long enough, you’re going to get somewhere.