Latest news with #MickJagger
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘He made the dust fly!' Mick Jagger and others on 100 years of Clifton Chenier, the king of zydeco
'Clifton Chenier was one of the most influential musicians to come out of Louisiana,' Mick Jagger tells me. 'He turned so many people on to the wonderful, free spirited dance music of zydeco. He was a true original, a trailblazer.' Jagger acknowledges that while no music style can be attributed to one artist, 'there is not a zydeco band who has not followed the template Chenier created'. Jagger is not engaging in hyperbole here: Clifton Chenier's swaggering, accordion-driven sound introduced the Creole music of rural Louisiana to the world – now known as zydeco, the name derived either from the Creole pronunciation of haricots, or possibly a west African word for music-making. Created by the US's poorest communities, zydeco is very much dance music, and concerts were once held outside to 'make the dust fly', says Chenier's grandniece, Sherelle Chenier Mouton. At its most elemental, it's made with an accordion, a rubboard – a steel washboard played with beer bottle caps attached to the player's fingers to scrape percussive rhythms – and the human voice, and shares characteristics with music made in Haiti, Brazil and other African diaspora nations. Chenier adapted zydeco into an offshoot of R&B – 'French blues', according to blues legend Jimmie Vaughan – and this funky, swampy music is now beloved across the American south and internationally. Even Beyoncé nodded to zydeco and her 'Creole mama' with her song Formation. 'Uncle Clifton's music brings every kind of people from every background together to dance the two-step,' Mouton says. Chenier was born 100 years ago this month, and died from kidney disease aged 62 in 1987. To celebrate the centenary there's a biography, a forthcoming Smithsonian Folkways box set and a truly starry tribute album: Tribute to the King of Zydeco has the likes of Lucinda Williams, Steve Earle, Jimmie Vaughan and the Rolling Stones joining zydeco and Cajun musicians to play Chenier songs. 'I first discovered his music by buying Chenier LPs in New York jazz and blues record stores in the late 1960s,' says Jagger. 'The Stones always really enjoyed listening to his special blend of Cajun dance music. And still do.' Indeed, the Stones open Tribute to the King with their version of Zydeco Sont Pas Salés, which has Jagger singing in 'Louisiana French' (a Creolised French patois) while Richards and Wood rock with abandon. This might just be the loosest, rawest Stones recording since Exile on Main St. 'Instantly they made the track, and zydeco, their very own style,' says CC Adcock, a Lafayette-based guitarist-producer who oversaw the Stones session. 'Keith used bendy licks to navigate and emphasise the idiosyncratic traditional accordion chord changes. Ronnie instinctively held down a funky boogie rhythm part in a way that a modern zydeco guitarist might.' Adcock called on Robert St Julien, Chenier's drummer, and Cajun accordionist Steve Riley, to serve as 'honorary Stones' and ensure a strong Louisiana flavour. 'It's a profound honour to collaborate with the Rolling Stones,' says Riley. 'The fact that they are a part of this is testament to the impact of Clifton's music.' Born to impoverished sharecroppers outside Opelousas, Louisiana, Chenier was Creole: the Black people of the US south-west who speak French, or whose ancestors did. His father Joseph played accordion at dances ('French music' or 'la-la' as zydeco was then called). Chenier cut sugar cane on plantations before working for the petrochemical industry, playing accordion and singing for his fellow workers. Blues and Caribbean influences spiced his sound and he released his first hit in 1955, Ay Tete-Fee, a success that enabled Clifton and band to tour nationally with Etta James and Little Richard. 'I came out a hole, man,' Chenier told Louisiana writer Ben Sandmel in 1983. 'I mean out the mud; they had to dig me out the mud to bring me into town. All my people speak French and I learned it from them. A lot of people 'shamed of speakin' French, but not me. The old generation had [zydeco] but it died out. I brought zydeco back.' But he also made an attempt at straight R&B, which failed, and by the early 1960s, Chenier was reduced to working alongside a drummer playing rowdy bars in Houston's Frenchtown. It was here in 1964 that bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins brought Chris Strachwitz, the founder of Arhoolie Records. Strachwitz began recording him, initially releasing 45s for the local market, before his 1966 debut album Louisiana Blues and Zydeco launched him from Houston bars to Newport folk festival, Montreux jazz festival and the Royal Albert Hall. 'People ask me how I can get up on the bandstand and play four hours without stopping,' he told Sandmel. 'It's because I've always been a hard worker, always. When I get up there, I'm up there, no half-steppin'.' 'I saw him in New Orleans in the 70s, then at a high school dance in the Watts neighbourhood outside LA,' Jagger says. 'A night to remember. He was quite magnificent.' Jagger notes how the Watts concert was packed with transplanted Louisiana Creoles all dancing the two-step and, when post-concert he was introduced to Chenier as 'from the Rolling Stones' Clifton thanked him for 'writing nice things about my music' – he was aware of Rolling Stone magazine but completely unaware of the band. Ann Savoy, a musician and chronicler of Cajun and Creole culture, saw him around the same era, in early 1970s Cankton, Louisiana at a place called Jay's Lounge. 'There were rooster fights going on out the back, gumbo was cooking, people were dancing, it was a hot, sultry night, and the music was smoking.' Jon Cleary, raised in Kent and long resident in Louisiana, transforms I'm On the Wonder into a deep soul ballad on the tribute album – and remembers that by the early 1980s, Chenier's playing was still just as hot. 'I moved to New Orleans after leaving school,' says Cleary, 'and I saw Clifton every chance I got. He'd be up there sweating in a suit and tie, a giant crown on his head – the king of zydeco! – and the groove was relentless. He'd be wailing a slow blues, a waltz, and then bust out into straight zydeco. And zydeco was a different beast: two beats, two chords – just him on accordion and his brother Cleveland churning out wild funky grooves on a metal washboard.' Chenier would release a dozen albums on Arhoolie and establish an international platform for zydeco. Esteemed documentary film-maker Les Blank directed 1973's Hot Pepper, which documents Clifton playing Creole clubs; Paul Simon sang of Chenier on Graceland; Rory Gallagher honoured him with the song The King of Zydeco. In 1984 Chenier won a Grammy, a huge honour for the often downtrodden Creole people. In the early 20th century, parts of the US and Canada introduced legislation banning children from speaking French in public schools, but while 'French music' had endured underground in Creole communities, it was Chenier's success that encouraged others to follow his lead and consequently zydeco thrives today, with rappers and dance beats adding to zydeco's musical gumbo. The video to Beyoncé's Formation references zydeco trail rides: a popular weekend community gathering involving horse riding, barbecues and dancing to zydeco. What Chenier helped shape is now an emblem of the Black south, alongside Cajun culture, created by the white descendants of French ancestors. 'Historically we'd say, down here, if you're white and you play the accordion, then you play Cajun. And if you're Black and you play the accordion, then you play zydeco,' says Joel Savoy of Valcour Records. Cultures that were once drawn along racial lines 'are very blurred now, the two scenes overlap a lot, both musician-wise and audience-wise. Cajun and zydeco music coexist very happily.' Indeed, on Tribute to the King the cream of Louisiana's zydeco and Cajun musicians accompany the famous guests. There's also Chenier's son CJ, who inherited his father's accordions and band, and Mouton, granddaughter of Chenier's brother Cleveland, who plays rubboard, the ribbed steel washboard Cleveland and Clifton invented for performing. 'Picking up my grandfather's washboard after he passed I wondered if I could play that thing,' Mouton says. 'Well, I strapped it around my neck, turned on some of Uncle Clifton's music and started playing along. Now my three-year-old son, Levi, has his own washboard and joins me on stage every chance he gets. Guess it's safe to say the legacy will live on for generations to come.' A Tribute to the King of Zydeco is on Valcour Records. Celebrating the Centenary of Clifton Chenier (with Ruben Moreno) takes place at Maverick festival, Easton Farm Park, Suffolk, 4-6 July.
Telegraph
17 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Rise of the ‘geriatric dads' as Mick Jagger effect takes hold
Britain has seen a surge in the number of 'geriatric dads' as more men follow the likes of Mick Jagger and have children in later life. The number of babies born to fathers aged over 60 jumped by 14.2pc to 1,076 last year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The increase was by far the highest among parents of any age group or gender and the ONS described the jump as 'notable'. It means more men are joining the ranks of celebrities like Sir Mick Jagger, Al Pacino and Sir Rod Stewart, all of whom had children after they were past pension age. Vincent Straub, a men's health researcher from the University of Oxford, said celebrity 'geriatric dads' had made it more acceptable to have children in later life and could help to explain the rise. Mr Straub said: 'My hunch is there is presumably an increase in the cultural media coverage of well-known figures that have babies really later in life. Geriatric dads is the newest term – like Robert De Niro or Mick Jagger.' The Rolling Stones singer had his eighth child aged 73 in 2016. De Niro, meanwhile, was 79 when he welcomed his seventh child in 2023. Other high-profile examples include Pacino, who had his son Roman aged 83 in 2023, and Sir Rod, who was 66 when he had his youngest child in 2011. Health risks Christiaan Monden, a demographer at the University of Oxford, said the 'surprising' rise in new fathers over 60 last year reflected the fact that people are living longer and societal norms are changing. Mr Monden said: 'There's an increased acceptance of remarriage or second partnerships and women having children at higher ages. There's also probably a bit more acceptance of large age differences between partners, and so that makes it possible to have more of these births.' Older fathers in the ONS's figures tend to be younger sexagenarians, rather than men in their 70s or 80s. Mr Monden said: 'In this group, the vast majority are men between 60 and 64, so it is not the kind of Al Pacino or Mick Jagger age range. That's really very uncommon.' While the news is likely to be welcomed by politicians like Nigel Farage, who have expressed concern about Britain's sluggish birth rate, researcher Mr Straub warned the development was concerning from a public health perspective. Men becoming fathers late in life is 'definitely not risk-free' and comes with a higher likelihood of the children having autism. Mr Straub said: 'It shows men's comparative lack of fertility education compared to women. They think that they don't really have this biological clock. But there are still all these associations with decreased fertility chances and more adverse outcomes for children, the older men are at conception. 'This uptick over the last year should ultimately worry policymakers because it means that there could be a potential increase in the health risks to these children.' Mr Monden added that the overall fertility rate for older men has been broadly stable for decades, so it is too soon to declare a Jagger-inspired baby boom. The rise in older fathers comes as births across England and Wales increased for the first time since 2021. Births remain low by historical standards, however. Some 594,677 children were born last year, marking a small 0.6pc uplift from the 46-year low reached in 2023.
Times
3 days ago
- Health
- Times
Men's biological clock linked to IVF miscarriages
Men have a reproductive biological clock that makes miscarriages more likely in IVF pregnancies involving older fathers, research has found. Men are able to produce sperm throughout their lives, making it possible to conceive a child at any age — as proved by Al Pacino and Sir Mick Jagger, who became fathers again at the ages of 83 and 73 respectively. Male fertility is, however, known to decline with age. It was previously known that sperm from men over the age of 45 has a lower chance of successfully fertilising an egg during the IVF (in vitro fertilisation) process. Jagger with his son Deveraux, who was born when the singer was 73 and his partner Melanie Hamrick was 29 Now research has confirmed that the father's age remains a factor after a successful fertilisation, with a lower rate of live births through IVF for babies conceived by middle-aged men even if the egg came from a younger woman.
Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Times
Rod Stewart: ‘We've got to give Nigel Farage a chance'
Hard to imagine as it may be, this weekend Rod Stewart will slip into his velvet loafers, preen his golden mane and head down to a farm in Somerset to apply his throaty roar to Maggie May, Sailing and other favourites at Glastonbury Festival. 'I'm fit, have a full head of hair and can run 100 metres in 18 seconds at the jolly old age of 79,' he boasted at the end of last year when it was announced that he would be playing the Sunday afternoon legends slot. But that was months ago. Now the ominous challenge of navigating the hellish lavatories, searching desperately for his pop-up tent and climbing the site to pay a visit to the Stone Circle — as Mick Jagger did when the Rolling Stones played Glastonbury in 2013 — is upon him. Of course, Stewart won't actually have to do any of the above. 'I'll wander up and down,' he says, of the extent of his plans to slum it for the weekend. 'I'll have one hell of a party with the band and crew members at a hotel in Bath the night before. Then I don't know what I'll do, really. I suppose I should take it all in because I won't be asked to do it again.' • Follow our live coverage of Glastonbury 2025 How much longer can Stewart go on? 'Who knows? Mick Jagger is 82 this year. We're pushing the boundaries. But singing is what I love. I've seen so many people retire and fade into oblivion because they get up in the morning with nothing to do, and this keeps you vital. I've got a band with six guys and six girls, we adore each other, we have a good old piss-up after every show, and it's a family on the road. Woody [Ronnie Wood] says the Stones don't do anything like that. They get in their cars and go off in different directions.' Performing in Australia, 2023 DON ARNOLD/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES In the run-up to Glastonbury, Stewart had to cancel a handful of US dates to save his voice. 'The older you get, you've really got to look after it,' he says of the source of all his riches. 'Plenty of water, plenty of sleep, and if you feel like the voice is not so good, silence. Before a gig, I have a sign up for eight hours that says: 'Can't talk today.' It works miracles. Other rock stars have used steroids, which is a trap because it shrinks the vocal cords and you sing like a bird, but you can't keep doing that. Now their careers are finished.' We're in a photographic studio in an unlovely part of northwest London and Stewart, trim and tanned at 80 in a white checked suit ('It's from Zara'), seems to have mixed feelings about his Glastonbury placing. In 2002 he headlined the Pyramid Stage. Now he is in what he calls 'the f***ing teatime slot. It's so annoying.' Still, it's the teatime nobody wants to miss. By Sunday afternoon, festival-goers are exhausted and feeling rather fragile, so singing along to the classics by a beloved singer is just what the Glastonbury homeopathic doctor ordered. It is why past sets by Diana Ross, Cat Stevens and Shania Twain have gone down so well. • Glastonbury 2025 TV Guide: How to watch the festival live from home 'Oh, I won't let them down. It will be noisy, sexy and energetic,' he guarantees of a gig for which he will be paid about £120,000 but will cost him £300,000 to stage. He lists the host of hits he has to pull from: Baby Jane, Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?, Hot Legs, all favourites from the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties, his leopardskin-clad pop era. 'And You Wear It Well, simply because every time there's a picture of me and the missus in the papers it's: 'Ooh, he wears it well…'' All of this has made Stewart a popular character, a Jack-the-lad done good who rarely seems to take life too seriously. He was the youngest of five children, born to a Scottish father, who worked as a builder, and an English mother in north London. His teenage ambitions in professional football ended when he realised how many sober nights and early mornings were involved. Then his father bought him a guitar. He went towards music instead and fell under the wing of Long John Baldry, a flamboyant blues singer whose homosexuality was an open secret on the gig circuit. Perhaps due to Baldry's influence Stewart became an early champion of gay rights, not least with his 1976 single The Killing of Georgie, a tale of a friend killed in a homophobic attack in New York. 'He was a good mate of mine and Ronnie's when we were in the Faces,' Stewart says of Georgie. 'Then one day he disappeared. Got murdered — knifed to death. And Long John Baldry was great — what a lovely man. I think he fancied me. He would act all butch on stage and then come off and go, 'Ooh Roddy, do you want a drink, dear?' So camp. But it was all behind closed doors because this was pre-1967, pre-decriminalisation.' At home in London, 1976 MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY IMAGES These days Stewart has taken on some rather more provincial causes — like fixing the potholes on the road outside his house in Essex. In 2022 he was filmed with a hi-vis jacket and a shovel, getting stuck into the tarmac after one of his sports cars suffered a serious ding. 'I took me Ferrari out. Nearly lost the f***ing wheel,' he moans, still sounding cross about it. 'And before I did in the Ferrari I saw an ambulance that couldn't move, the wheel stuck right in there. So I took me mates out, and we knew what to do because I had builders in the house. We filled in a considerable length of the road, actually.' There begins the political section of our interview. 'It's all over Britain,' Stewart says of the pothole crisis, looking suitably concerned. 'As I travel in Italy, Germany, nowhere else is as bad. Starmer has promised to spend millions on it … We shall see.' Where does Stewart see Britain's political future going? 'It's hard for me because I'm extremely wealthy, and I deserve to be, so a lot of it doesn't really touch me. But that doesn't mean I'm out of touch. For instance, I've read about Starmer cutting off the fishing in Scotland and giving it back to the EU. That hasn't made him popular. We're fed up with the Tories. We've got to give Farage a chance. He's coming across well.' Nigel? 'What options have we got? I know some of his family, I know his brother, and I quite like him.' What, I ask, does Nigel Farage stand for, apart from Brexit, tightened immigration policies and unrealistic economic promises? • Nigel Farage: 'Will I be the next PM? There's a good chance' 'Yeah, yeah,' Stewart says. 'But Starmer's all about getting us out of Brexit and I don't know how he's going to do that. Still, the country will survive. It could be worse. We could be in the Gaza Strip.' Or Ukraine. Stewart took in a family of seven Ukrainians for a year in 2022 before they were rehoused by the UK government. 'I sent my two nephews over to Ukraine as well when the war started,' he says. 'They had two SUVs filled with whatever they felt was needed, and they brought families back and dropped them off in Berlin. Even now I dedicate Rhythm of My Heart to Ukraine. Did you see the way Zelensky was treated for not wearing a tie when he went to the White House? I could have jumped on [Trump and Vance]. And it backfired because no one liked it. You've got the other dickhead, the one with the motor car company, coming in wearing a baseball cap [Elon Musk, although he's since left the administration] … Mate, it's depressing.' At the American Music awards in Las Vegas in May RICH POLK/PENSKE MEDIA/GETTY IMAGES As he slumps deeper into an armchair and considers a new era of global instability — this is before Trump ordered the US bombing of Iran's nuclear sites — the weight of the world really does seem to fall on Stewart's usually unburdened shoulders. 'It's depressing, what's going on in the Gaza Strip,' he says. 'Netanyahu doesn't realise that this is what happened to his people under the Nazis: total annihilation. And Trump is going to turn the Gaza Strip into Miami?' Are we heading back to the kind of crisis last seen in 1930s Europe? 'I'm disappointed that Trump has moved away from Europe, as America were our strongest allies, but a world war? I don't see it. The Russians have got no money. They can't keep up the Ukrainian war much longer. What does upset me is America signing a $47 billion arms deal with Israel. I think the British are still selling arms to the Israelis. How is it ever going to stop?' Stewart, meanwhile, has led something of a charmed life, which really got going with a run of solo hits while he was also singing for the Faces in the early 1970s. It led to his becoming the ultimate rock star in 1975 with the album Atlantic Crossing, so named for his 'going Hollywood' and moving to America, chiefly to escape an 83 per cent supertax under Harold Wilson's Labour government. 'I didn't want to go,' he says. 'I was tricked into going by a manager who announced, only after I got there, that I couldn't return to Britain for a year, which broke my heart. But then I got used to it: played football, loved the sunshine, met Britt Ekland. I only left seven years ago.' How was that period? 'It was glamorous,' Stewart says of life in Los Angeles with the Swedish actress. 'Britt started making me wear make-up. Funny days.' It was after their two-year relationship ended in 1977 that Stewart announced his newly single status with the disco-tinged mating call Da Ya Think I'm Sexy? It will no doubt go down a storm at Glastonbury, but the song was dismissed at the time as a betrayal of Rod's rock'n'roll roots. It also has a chorus remarkably similar to Taj Mahal by the Brazilian singer Jorge Ben. Stewart claimed in his 2012 biography that, having been at the 1978 Rio Carnival, he must have been guilty of unconscious plagiarism. Now he comes clean. • I've spent £1,500 before I even get to Glastonbury 'Oh yeah, I nicked it,' he says, breezily. 'Never earned a penny out of it. All the royalties went to Unicef.' Amid all this, Stewart has no truck with people who complain about the pressures of fame. 'If you don't like it get out of the f***ing business,' he advises his less appreciative contemporaries. 'I don't mind the spotlight. If you're going to be in the public eye, then the public need and want to see you. They've given me what I've got. You always have to remember that.' Since he returned to the UK, Stewart's life has been rather more domestic. Much of that is down to his Essex-born wife, Penny Lancaster, with whom he has two sons and whom he met at the bar of the Dorchester hotel the day after he broke up with his former wife Rachel Hunter in 1999. 'She came up and asked for my autograph, so I said, 'Do you like dancing?' She was an incredible dancer, gorgeous, 6ft 4in heels, ai-yi-yi. I was very lucky. I went out of one marriage and into the next.' With his wife, Penny Lancaster, in London in May ASH KNOTEK/SHUTTERSTOCK Didn't he want a period of singledom before getting hitched again? 'F***ing right,' he roars. 'There were six months between Rachel and Penny because my bass player, who had Penny's number, wouldn't give it to me. He said, 'All you're going to do now is shag around.' And he was right: I had a splendid time in those six months. Rachel left me because she was too young — my sister said I should never have married her in the first place — but it tore me to shreds. Now I'm with Penny and she's got everything I could possibly want.' Including law enforcement. In 2022 Lancaster became a special constable for the City of London police. 'I have noticed she's got more bossy since she's been a copper,' he muses on this unexpected turn of events. 'The kids have noticed, we've all noticed. She seems to think she knows everything now.' Will Lancaster go to Glastonbury? Perhaps she could be put in charge of policing the holding pen for people who jump over the fence. 'Oh yeah,' he says, after letting slip that he's planning to include the Neil Young song Powderfinger in his set. 'She'll be there. We'll all be there.' Then as if remembering that Glastonbury is a national celebration, everyone will be turning out or tuning in to see him, and he really has very little to complain about, Rod Stewart raises his arms in triumph. 'Wa-hey!' Rod Stewart plays the Pyramid Stage, Glastonbury Festival, Sun 3.45pm. Watch on BBC1 at 7.15pm or on iPlayer
CBC
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- CBC
Bezos-Sanchez wedding draws A-list celebs, angry protesters
A-list celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Mick Jagger and Leonardo DiCaprio are in Venice for the wedding of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez. The massive event has also drawn protesters, angry over the income inequality they say Bezos exemplifies.
