{"id":690197,"date":"2026-07-14T00:13:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-14T00:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/690197\/"},"modified":"2026-07-14T00:13:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-14T00:13:18","slug":"mick-jagger-reflects-on-his-rivalries-with-david-bowie-and-john-lennon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/690197\/","title":{"rendered":"Mick Jagger reflects on his rivalries with David Bowie and John Lennon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mick<\/p>\n

Credit: YouTube Still<\/p>\n

Mon 13 July 2026 17:59, UK <\/p>\n

Mick Jagger<\/a> has reflected on his friendships with the late David Bowie and John Lennon, which were both \u201ccompetitive\u201d in their own unique ways.<\/p>\n

Jagger and Bowie gravitated towards each other when they both lived in New York during the 1980s, which led to the creation of their classic 1985 collaboration, \u2018Dancing in the Street<\/a>\u2018.<\/p>\n

Looking back at their unique relationship, while speaking to Conan O\u2019Brien on the Conan Needs A Friend podcast, after the comedian noted how Jagger previously privately told him that he and were Bowie were \u201ccompetitive but remained good friends\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jagger shared, \u201cYeah, we were competitive.\u00a0David was so competitive, much more competitive (than me).\u00a0I was made competitive by David.\u00a0He was so competitive that I had to be competitive back.\u201d<\/p>\n

He elaborated, \u201cDavid went through all these different iterations. There isn\u2019t one David Bowie. There\u2019s kind of like a slowly evolving David Bowie. There\u2019s jump cuts of, you know, to another David Bowie, another style. When he was doing like \u2018Jean Genie\u2019, he was very Stonesy. That was a very Stonesy period.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Stones frontman then recalled his first response to \u2018The Jean Genie\u2019, telling Bowie, \u201c\u2018God, you nicked all my things\u201d, but rather than deny it, Bowie hilariously responded, \u201c\u2018Yeah, I know man, I know, but it\u2019s like a homage to you\u2019,\u201d according to Jagger. <\/p>\n

Bowie wasn\u2019t the only musical friend whose friendship with Jagger had a competitive edge to it; John Lennon was also in this boat, but for very different reasons. <\/p>\n

Jagger explained, \u201cI think John and I were very competitive too, John Lennon.\u00a0But we\u2019re more competitive in being sarcastic. Just verbal competitiveness.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then asked Conan if he\u2019d ever seen the famous video of Lennon and Bob Dylan in the back of a taxi while completely stoned<\/a> in 1966, which he said \u201cwas John at his most\u2026 he\u2019s being very sarcastic with Bob and Bob\u2019s not really coming back with zingy answers.\u201d <\/p>\n

He added, \u201cIt does give you a good illustration of (John Lennon), because most of the other things are kind of short, and that\u2019s extended sarcasm (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

While Jagger said Lennon \u201ccould be lovely\u201d, he also said, \u201cHe\u2019s one of those people that if you\u2019d say something stupid he\u2019d pick you up (on it). He\u2019d clock it right away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was very competitive about it, he wasn\u2019t competitive\u00a0about anything else,\u201d before clarifying he meant the competitiveness was strictly about \u201cbeing funny and sarcastic\u201d, which he says is \u201ca kind of Liverpool thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: YouTube Still Mon 13 July 2026 17:59, UK Mick Jagger has reflected on his friendships with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690198,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,16845,96,25396,25722,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-690197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-david-bowie","tag-entertainment","tag-john-lennon","tag-mick-jagger","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690197\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}