Jagger starts the film telling us how he despises the exact rock mythology this cliche-ridden show indulges in. Worse still, it fails to ask difficult questions about his band’s problematic past
Very few men can work a front-lacing skin-tight jumpsuit. Certainly not without getting their nipples caught or their beer gut stretching the satinet unbecomingly. Or, indeed, without the ensemble suggesting an accident in a sausage factory.
Early on in My Life As a Rolling Stone (BBC Two) we see Mick Jagger before a 1970s gig, tightening the laces on his jumpsuit across his chest – snake hipped, underwear (if worn) invisible, genitals only tantalisingly visible. Jagger in his pomp not only looked good but typified the gender-fluid carnivalesque liberation of dressing up championed by queer theorists and, according to the voiceover, something else.
