Chris Jagger’s Rock’n’roll Years

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© Alec Byrne

1967 at the Saville Theatre, London: Chris fits up Jimi Hendrix with the handmade jacket he made for him and which subsequently appeared on US record covers

Chris Jagger

Last year Chris Jagger (OE 1966) released a new album, Mixing up the Medicine, and a memoir, Talking to Myself. Here he answers some questions put to him by Andrew Beattie.

He has made a dozen albums, shared a stage with Pierce Brosnan, been on a journalistic mission to Tibet, made blues documentaries for TV and written lyrics for two Rolling Stones albums – and his brother Mick, whom he has kept in touch with over the years, sings on the opening track of his new album. His is a story worth telling, as he demonstrates here.

You’ve written and performed over a hundred songs over the course of your career. Which are your favourites, and which would you recommend to those coming to your work for the first time?

Usually the favourites are the ones you’ve recently written – so, in this case, the songs on Mixing up the Medicine which were written with

Chris in 1968 shortly after he left Eltham College long-time collaborator Charlie Hart, who in fact lives close to Eltham in Lewisham. It’s best to work with a partner. Both parties bring something different to the table that way. Charlie is great as he plays the piano, fiddle, accordion and bass, and he can quickly spot potential: it might be a bass line, a lyric…something that makes it different. But that’s just the beginning, because any song needs development, arrangement and a whole raft of things. My songs are rather old-fashioned, as that’s what I do best.

You write and perform as a soloist and with your band, Atcha. Which do you prefer and why?

It’s much more fun with a band – especially if you have a good one. Solo work is tough, but I have done it.

You keep chickens and sheep on your Somerset smallholding. How and why did you get into that, and what are the challenges of running a small farm?

That needs more than a simple paragraph to answer! One reason is their appeal to my grandchildren… and when you live in the country, it’s what people do.

Looking through past editions of The Elthamian I see that at school you were involved with sport, including athletics and basketball. We’d love to hear your memories of these.

All that is detailed in the book. I was a footballer but that was taboo at Eltham so I had to play rugby, which as far as I’m concerned is a game with a funny-shaped ball where you move forwards by passing backwards.

Rock’n’roll Years

Working as a duo or three piece is OK, but you can’t play rock’n’roll without a back beat. Musicians today use loops, which are repeating sections of sound material, along with other devices, so you can basically be a one-man-band if you want, but it’s not as much fun. As I was the best tackler they made me a fullback – and in those days it was a ‘hanging offence’ to cross the halfway line. I enjoyed rugby sevens more as it’s more open. The last game I played for the school was at the Oxford Sevens and we were hammered by an Irish Catholic side who went on to win the competition. The game was up for me! However, I was captivated by the athletics team and won the individual cup two years running, as I chose the events carefully!

You were also involved in school drama, weren’t you, directing a play for Moffat House.

In the 1960s the Lower Sixth was basically a ‘free’ year so there was time for more interesting things like the House play. I was inspired by an earlier production of Eugène Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros; the Ionesco play that I directed was The New Tenant and it consisted of moving numerous pieces of furniture onto the stage under the direction of the New Tenant until there was no more room and the light was turned off. I listened to the →

opinions of the audience as they departed, and it was great hearing their mostly derogative comments as they didn’t get it. It was all quite amusing really.

And we’d love it too if you could share some of your other memories of the school – maybe those you describe in your memoir. Were you involved much in music, for instance?

I did absolutely no music in school as the school’s musical life was exclusively comprised of classical music and hymns. I once brought a Charlie Mingus record into the ‘music appreciation’ class and it was ripped off the record player after about twenty seconds. They didn’t get that either, probably as it was played by Black Americans and it was thought the only proper music was written in Salzburg or Venice. As Jimmy Page remarked, ‘I liked the guitar as it wasn’t taught in school.’ Of course things have changed now – though when Charlie Hart and I taught an afternoon session at a Sixth Form college not too long ago, he remarked to a violinist: ‘you could show that to your music teacher’, whereupon she replied, ‘I wouldn’t tell them I played that!’ So I guess musical snobbism still exists. Otherwise, we were forced to sing endless Victorian hymns every morning and evening (and two church services on Sundays) which personally drove me mad. There was one lad who played lots of tunes by ear and we all loved him, but again he was given little attention by the Music Department at the time.

Your father was a PE teacher and was involved in sailing and canoeing clubs at the school. Do you have any memories of those?

My father worked for the Central Council for Physical Recreation (CCPR) which co-ordinated sports activities in the South East. At school he played football against Walter Winterbottom, who later became England manager, so going to Wembley matches was never a problem. One time I went with a pal to watch a mid-week FA Cup game at Tottenham. We were shown down a dark tunnel, eventually emerging onto the pitch itself where we watched the game from the trainers’ bench. That was the team that won the double. My father took an interest in the school’s canoeing club, and my brother Mick and I featured with him on Seeing Sport on Associated Television (ATV), formerly part of the ITV network. In one edition you can see Mick climbing up Harrison’s Rocks, a sandstone crag in East Sussex, with the former Olympic athlete John Disley instructing. Disley and his fellow athlete Chris Brasher were both associates of my father and later founded the London Marathon, which, I should say, faced considerable opposition at its inception.

Your music took you to India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Israel in the 1970s and 1980s. Tell us about those experiences.

After leaving Eltham College I was due to go up to Manchester University to study Drama, but I became a little too involved with the ‘scene’ in London (it was all happening in the mid-sixties), so I missed the academic boat. Instead I took off to points east, and in a way that was my university as I met many friends along the long road who taught me about many things, including contemporary American literature, poetry, science and Sanskrit. So I had a rather unorthodox education, at one point even studying with a local music teacher in Almora in the foothills of the Himalayas, where I learnt to sing a little and appreciate ascending and descending scales. But, as I say, there’s lots more about that in the book.

Chris with his brother Mick

Chris Jagger’s book, Talking to Myself, is published by BMG books in hardback and e-book formats.

You seem to have many strings to your bow. We’d be interested in hearing about you treading the boards with Pierce Brosnan and Ciaran Hinds, and making documentaries about blues music for the BBC and Sky Arts.

As I said, I was going to take a Drama course after school before deciding not to go. I did finally get around to some study in Los Angeles in 1975 with the legendary teacher Stella Adler – who actually knew Stanislavsky and had helped Marlon Brando and Warren Beatty among others. She gave me some direction and, on returning to London, I joined the Black Theatre of Brixton, where I was the only white guy there. I then appeared in a specially written two-hander about the Angolan Civil War at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in The Mall and things developed from there. I really don’t know how good an actor I was; I guess I had enough to make it work, but appearing with people like Ciaran Hinds and Bill Nighy made

me appreciate my shortcomings. Whatever the case, I enjoyed repertory theatre, particularly the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow.

You write in your autobiography about how your brother influenced your early tastes in music – and how you saw the fledgling Rolling Stones at the Scene Club in London. Did you always know they were going to be big?

All the fans at the time were convinced of that, but perhaps that was the case with many groups and their followers. When you look back it’s surprising that a band like the Yardbirds didn’t make it bigger considering the line-up they had. I guess there’s an element of luck in these things, but being in the right place at the right time is crucial. What nobody did know in the early times is that they would come up with songs that built into such a catalogue, and that’s the really important element.

Your latest album – recorded partly during lockdown – utilises the works of an obscure 19th century poet. Tell us about it

I decided to take most of 2019 off to finish the book, as you need to concentrate on the job in hand and travelling to gigs at the weekend is distracting. So basically, I wrote pre-lockdown and mostly in the mornings, and when I felt good about it. I wanted it to be enjoyable for me rather than a chore. That worked OK, but then musicians need to play so later each day I turned to writing songs as that’s pretty complimentary. I had read a book by Ezra Pound where he mentioned Thomas Beddoes, so I looked him up and found one of his tomes, Death’s Jest-Book. I pulled some verses out and put them to music, which was fun. I included these in the record, along with other tunes that Charlie and I came up with, so we had both a record and a book. As I came up with the title Talking to Myself for the book, I thought I would write a number with the same title so Charlie came up with a Mose Allison type treatment that worked well. The trouble is that in this country they won’t give any radio time to anything except new music, so there’s no chance the BBC will play your records. Personally, I think it’s disgraceful. As broadcaster Andy Kershaw once said to me: ‘there’s two kinds of music, good and bad.’ In contrast I have had good radio play and more attention in the USA. They just get it somehow and appreciate real, well-made music.

It’s released on CD and vinyl as well as digital download. Is there still life in those older formats?

Vinyl seems to be more popular than CD these days!

And finally, what advice would you give current pupils at the school who might aspire to a career in music?

I’m afraid the future looks pretty bleak. Music is wonderful to share with others and uplifting too, but it’s so hard to make a living from it. Venues are closing; Covid has been a disaster for the industry and Brexit equally so. When you travel around Europe and further afield you see how well regarded the British music scene is, and how they respect it, yet in our own country this is not the case. Support for the arts is always being cut by the government, though it amounts to a small percentage of any budget. When you visit the Netherlands you see the quality and conditions of the theatres and venues and how they are supported locally and centrally. I was at one well-run arts centre a while ago, and the director said to me that their funding had just ended abruptly under David Cameron’s government. ‘Had they informed me six months or more ahead that this would be the case I could have planned an alternative,’ she said, ‘but now we will have to close.’ Where will young people go to try things out and where will the community have a sense of coming together if we endorse such policies, I ask? Surely the mark of a civilized society is to provide such facilities for the young and old? But studying music is beneficial, as has been recently proved, and I believe it helps in old age too: it’s an exercise remembering your songs and others’ too, and at whatever point in your education you are, improvement is always possible.

I have been so fortunate knowing other excellent musicians far above me in their competence, yet they value my contribution as I come up with lyrics and ideas, sometimes unconventional ones, as I don’t have a proper musical foundation. The drummer might ask ‘where is the count?’, and I have to try to work out what I have actually done. The other aspect to remember is that you might be led into other fields such as music publishing, radio or TV. I have many pals who have made a living in these areas. They still have a close association with music and play for their own enjoyment. You might play cricket but how many make it to play the first-class game…yet they are reluctant to give it up! ⬤

Chris’s new album was released last year