Digger: How do you cope with the hordes of screaming girls (and boys)
chasing you everywhere you go?
Dagger: (Laughs)
They don't chase you EVERYWHERE you go. Our spectrum of fans is
from very, very young and I mean 7 or 8 year-olds who
regularly write to us on the website, upto....... there are three
little old ladies who come to see us every year at Edmonton and
they're in their eighties. In between those two extremes is a huge
cross-section of people. Some of them have been coming to see us
for sixteen years. The youngsters who contact us are often guitar
players and are very interested in the tunings and the set-ups and
the nuances of the music.
Digger: Asking for
consultancy?!
Dagger: Yeah, which
we're quite happy to give them.
Digger: That's
good................ Whereas Charlie is a definite lookey-likey, you seem to become
Mick Jagger as the evening progresses. I mean, when you
first came on stage, I said to myself "Right you've got to
convince me you're Mick Jagger". 'Charlie' was lucky because
nature had given him the Charlie look.
Dagger: I wouldn't call that lucky!
Digger: But he's
also a very good drummer.
Dagger: The first
drummer we had was with us for seven years and when we needed
another it was George Harrison of The Bootleg Beatles who helped
us out. Charlie drummed for George's other little band, but 'George'
recommended him for his sake even though he knew he was losing a
good drummer. I said "Does he look like Charlie Watts?"
and 'George' said "Just have a look at the guy play" and
he came along and that was it.
Nick and co.
can't contain themselves
Digger: You could have someone who's great with
the music but doesn't look the part.
Dagger: Yes, you've got costumes and wigs to at
least make yourself a cartoon of who you're portraying.
Digger: If I came on in costume trying to look
like Mick Jagger, I'd look ridiculous.
Dagger: You need to have some starting
point............
Digger: You have got a starting point. Without
wanting to sound gay, you've got a good figure.
Dagger: Yes, well I'm lucky that I've managed to
stay slim, albeit not as slim as Mick is. You can't have fat
Stones.
Digger: How exhausting is it to portray the energetic Mick Jagger?
Dagger: I find
different nights in different theatres more taxing than others. It
can be because I didn't sleep well, or because we have done a
lot of gigs on the trot, or often it's climatic. If it's hot and stuffy
in a place and there's no oxygen, then I suffer. Because I work
out a lot, if I do an open-air gig then I don't feel at all
knackered. It's very, very easy in the open air.
Digger: Do you do
the same level of exercise every set?
Dagger: Yes, absolutely.
You've seen the theatre show, when it starts in the early years.
When we do the festivals we come out with the seventies and early eighties
stuff and although it's a shorter set at an hour and a quarter
it's all big stage physical work so that can be more tiring but I
just treat it as an aerobic exercise and I've learned how to pace
myself and I find it exhilarating. I come off with more energy
then when I went on.
Digger: And you can
be excused going to the gym that day.
Dagger: That's
right.
Digger: Do you find
yourself adopting 'Mickisms' off-stage?
Dagger: Not
deliberately. My wife says that when I'm doing a long tour we
might be in a restaurant and I'll order in a Mick voice and she'll
say "No, no, you're being HIM now." Because my PR girl
really loads up the itinerary and I do hundreds of press and local
radio interviews and I go into character and once I've done a few
of those I'll be ordering lunch from the menu (Mick voice)
"Okay, yeah I'll have one of those, man."
Digger: And signing
autographs and chatting-up the girls?
The Boys on tour
Dagger: The good
thing is that out of costume I don't look anything like Mick. I'm
a different physical specimen altogether. I've a shaved head and
I'm very much a jeans and T-shirt person.
Digger: The humour in your act is really fantastic. It lifts the
evening and gets the audience warmed-up.
Dagger: I've always
found I can only do anything from a performing point of view if
it's got a lot of humour in it. I don't know if that's because I
have to hide behind it.
Digger: Was that
true from the early days?
Dagger: Yeah, yeah.
When I was producing people and working with big orchestras. When
I was 23 it was the first time I had to press the button in the
control room of a studio and the orchestra weren't playing something
quite the way I wanted it and I'd heard that these orchestras
could make mincemeat of somebody if they thought you didn't know
what you were talking about. I always treated life with a
bit of humour. And it certainly worked with the orchestra. I'd do
an impersonation of Harold Wilson or whoever down the mike and it
always broke the ice. I think that something like The Stones lends
it self to humour, even more so than The Beatles. If you see the
Spitting Image puppets of The Stones, they're hilarious, but The
Beatles, they aren't.
Digger: They did
look kind of funny to start with didn't they?
Dagger: Yes, I
laughed with my mum and dad when I first saw them on Ready Steady
Go.
Digger: It's almost
a common look with the original line-up. A Neanderthal look.
Dagger: It was all
very Neanderthal. They were called the cavemen of rock and roll.
When we did our last production, I opened with those shots from 1
Million Years B.C. I've always associated them with cavemen.
Digger: Is the audience reaction very
different at different venues?
Dagger: No, it isn't really. That's
the one thing I've learnt - I've never written any humour in any
commercial way until we started in 2000 incorporating into the
show in videos. I'd always done anecdotal stuff up until then, but
making the film clips I had no idea what the reaction would be.
Stuff I didn't see coming was seen as hilarious and stuff I
thought was great maybe wasn't, but it was always went down the
same and there seems to be a thing as the great collective unconscious.
On the whole we get the same belly laughs at the same point in the
set at every venue.
Mott,
Jones, Hymen, Dagger and Rickard
Digger: Regional differences aren't
as marked as they were and we're all on the move and the internet
and communications make us more the same.
Dagger:
Yes, in some ways it was easier when there were only three or four
TV
stations. The common denominator these days comes from printed
media and news stories. I have a very good PR company and she's
brilliant to have on board. She looks after the local publicity
and that's what put bums on seats!
Digger: The album covers and videos that intersperse your act are
hilarious. Are these ever going to be released on DVD and is there any chance of a Counterfeit Stones CD, or would
the lawyers have a field day?
Dagger: Anything with Stones music on with the images, we can't
use because of copyright. If we wanted to make an audio CD of the
Stones music I could do that. But the moment there's a visual
involved, it gets impossible to do because we'd not get the
permission. We may release a DVD of the backstage antics of the
band without the music, but I didn't want to release that until we
had used the material on our tours.
Digger: How do you get on with The Bootleg Beatles? Is there a lot of
rivalry between the bands?
Dagger:
We're great friends. I mean, often when we play on the same bill,
I always know that they should top the bill because The Beatles
were and are bigger than The Stones. Not only that, I just prefer
being on first in that kind of environment because we're more
suitable for livening an audience up. George of the Bootleg
Beatles sometimes is a bit bothered because he thinks they have to
go on after we have warmed an audience up for an hour or so and
then they come on cold and do a 'twinkly' I Want To Hold Your Hand
or something and the power of the music can be a little bit awkward
for the first ten minutes but what The Beatles do have is a lot of
great anthemic songs. By 45 minutes people are more interested in singing
along to Hey Jude and they're not thinking about Satisfaction and
the loud guitars anymore.
Digger:
Yes, because I get fed up. I am a big Beatles fan (a big Stones
fan too) but I get annoyed when people say "I think The
Beatles were overrated" and there were two camps in the sixties,
Beatles fans and Stones fans. I am not sure that was really true.
Dagger:
It was for about 6 months. I can remember when The Stones first
came along and there were a group of kids at school that were
trashing The Beatles. It was a case of The Beatles were 1963 and
The Stones are 1964 and a bit more rebellious. After about a year
everybody loved both bands.
Digger:
Yes, and both bands were developing very quickly, with their main strengths
being the songwriting.
Dagger:
Yeah, I think The Beatles were always the leaders in new ideas and
The Stones were terrible at copying them. They realised that Their
Satanic Majesties was the biggest mistake of their lives.
Digger: It must be great being able to play some of the best songs ever
written. Are there any songs that you don't play?
Dagger:
There are a lot of songs we don't play because we have to accept
that our act is based around a repertoire that might appeal to
people to people who quite like The Stones as well as the real
fans. In the mix, if you've got more than 10% of slightly
less-known things, it doesn't work.
Digger:
And you probably can't get away with Starf***er.
Dagger:
A couple of gigs a year we can get away with that. And Co****cker
Blues. Essentially, it sounds like TV, but it's a family audience!
Digger:
Have you ever tried to write songs in The Stones style?
Dagger:
Yes. And we had success with it. Broken English was so successful that
EMI put it out as a white label with no information.
Digger: Was
it like The Rutles did with The Beatles?
Dagger:
No, it wasn't comedic lyrically - the single was called Coming On
Strong. The whole
album is going to be re-released on 5th March. It went round all
the media and they were all convinced it was a Stones record. It
got loads and loads of airplay and there was a great video that
went with it that was a parody of The Ghostbusters. So already the
comedic thing was important for me even though we were with EMI
and 'a serious rock band' I still wanted a lot of humour in the
video.
Digger: What are the best and worst things about being The Counterfeit
Stones?
Dagger:
Worst is that you are a bit limited to the repertoire you can
play. But the best thing is that the repertoire is a passport to a
great audience every night.
Digger: The
difference between a tribute band and a lot of these sixties and
seventies bands who are still touring, albeit with only half an
original member of the group, is that a lot of them will go away
from their repertoire to play other bands' music.
Dagger:
Well, they have to because many of them are riding on only two or
three hits.
Digger:
Or one!
Dagger:
Or one, yes. The problem is - we have played with a lot of these
groups and they almost claim or imply that the songs they play
were their hits as well. "And this was a big hit in
1968.." and lead the audience to believe it was their hit,
which it wasn't.
Digger: Have you ever had any recognition/feedback from any of The
Stones?.....
Dagger: Oh yeah!.....
It's
Only Rock and Roll
Digger: I noticed that Bill Wyman was playing
in Northampton the day after you - did you leave any gifts in the
dressing room?.....
Dagger: (Laughs) We left a
message for him on the wall. It said "Good young audience,
Bill." We were never sure if it was a true story, but about
seven years ago we played the Shepherd's Bush Empire. And the week
after we were playing there, Mick Jagger's brother's group were
playing there. The bloke who was then the manager of the Empire
said to me "Jagger is coming down tonight to your show",
and I said "Really? Why would he want to do that?" and
he said "He came over to look over the place for his brother and
he saw your poster and he said what's all this about then? Are
they any good" and the manager said "Why don't you pop
along and have a look?" At the end of the gig I said "Did
Jagger turn up?" and he said "Oh yeah, he sat in the
hidden VIP area in one of the balconies for an hour and then
sloped off." And I said "Well, what did he say?"
and he said "Well, I don't know what he said but he definitely
popped in." I thought it might be one of the urban myths. Now, last
year, we did a gig for Tim Rice, who's a good friend of Mick
Jagger's. Tim had seen our London show and he said "I want
you to play at my son's wedding." So we played at the
wedding, a big marquee and you can imagine what it was like. I
asked Tim about Mick and our show, and he said "Well, I'm
seeing him tomorrow, I'll ask him." So I rang back the day
after and Tim said "Oh yes, I did talk to Mick about it. He
said he was very impressed with the show."
Digger: When I came to see The Counterfeit Stones recently with two
friends, we had between us seen The Rolling Stones a total of 8 times. We agreed that your musicianship,
rendition of the songs and sound quality was better. Does that surprise
you and why do you think this might be?
Dagger: I suppose
in a way it is a surprise and in a way it's not. When we tour, we cover a lot
of ground and do a lot of gigs, so it's probably no surprise that
we know the songs inside out. The Rolling Stones have always said that their
act is not about the past, and, in fact, it's only recently that
they have dusted-off some of their older songs and started to play
them live again.
Digger: Are you planning on playing for forty four years like the real
Stones?
Dagger:
Let's see. That will make me about ninety something... (long
silence)
Digger:
Who would you invite to a dinner party of your heroes, living or
dead?
Dagger:
Ummm.. Peter Ustinov, Kirk Douglas...
Digger:
The Sword and Sandals brigade?
Dagger:
I love all those old epic movies.
Digger:
When I interviewed Janet Leigh, she quipped that whilst she played
the Welsh Princess in the movie, she was the only GENUINE Viking
in the star cast of The Vikings. Kirk Douglas was born Issur
Danielovitch Demsky, of Russian Jewish parents, Ernest Borgnine
was Ermes Effron BorHergnino, an Italian and Tony Curtis was
Bernard Schwartz, a New York Jew. Whereas Janet could claim to
have Scandinavian ancestry.
Dagger:
(Laughs) That's great! (ponders)
Brian Epstein.. (ponders more)
I need some ladies, don't I?.. Natalie Wood, I liked her very
much. Peter Cook and Oliver Reed.
Digger:
They would stir things up a bit!
Dagger:
They would, wouldn't they?! Did you see Oliver on the Channel 4
programme After Dark?
Digger: Yes, outrageous.
Dagger:
(Laughs) A great character! And William Hague, the former
Conservative leader. I was at the Bibendum restaurant in London
and he and his wife Ffion were there. There's something about them
I like ... and Clare Francis - the
round the world yachtswoman. I have a lot of
respect for her. I know nothing about sailing because I have a
real fear of being in small boats. I'm alright on ferries and so
on, I swim in the sea. But the idea of being that far out at sea
in a small boat..... so I admire anyone who can do it. I've been
offered the chance of a couple of sailing holidays where it's six
people and you're out there, but even on a calm Mediterranean I'm
not sure I'd be happy about it.
Digger:
I was on a cruise on the Med, and there was one bad day when they
had to put the stabilisers on overnight, and I never saw them but
I had visions of these two big wheels sticking out of the boat
like on a kid's bike!
Dagger:
I was on a flight once which was so bad from Johannesburg to
Swaziland and most people got the sick bags out. Very few people
were actually sick. It was the most unpleasant flight with lightning coming through the plane and bumping around for two
hours.
Digger:
This is disgusting, so be warned........ Barry Humphries used to
take a jar of baby food with him on a plane, and when nobody was
looking he'd tip it into his sick bag. Later, he'd pretend to be
sick into it half way through the flight. Then, he'd get a
spoon....................
Dagger:
(Laughs) That is awful!
Digger: How would you sum-up the sixties?
Dagger: Well,
it was in two halves really. When we think of the sixties, most
people are thinking about '64 to '68. That was a fantastic time,
it really was. I found '68 to the end of the sixties very
depressing.
Digger:
Some people talk about 'The long sixties', which take us upto
about '73.
Dagger:
No, I couldn't disagree with that more. In '68 there were songs
like Young Girl and Everlasting Love and orchestral pop records
where there was no live music attached to the group anymore. Elvis
had got into his white suit doing records like In The Ghetto. It
became pop-manufactured. I was listening to John Mayall and Rory
Gallagher and people like that.
Digger:
Were you into Caravan and Soft Machine?
Dagger:
No. But I worked on Caravan's first album. They were managed by a chap
called Terry King.
Digger:
Sounds like a boxing manager.
Dagger:
Well, he LOOKED like he'd been in the ring! Caravan were signed to
Decca while I was a plugger there and Terry King asked me to take
all the promotion people out to lunch because he wanted a good
promotion on the Caravan single. And I worked on Question by The
Moody Blues. So the early sixties was more like the 50's, very
black and white, up until '64 and before Carnaby Street most
people wore suits like their dads and had short hair as well. It
was '64 to '67 that was the real anvil of colour and creativity.
Never to be repeated. But I remember people saying that was what
it was like in the roaring twenties between the two wars.
Digger:
They say it's a cyclical thing, every 7 years or so. Birth of Rock
and Roll, Beatlemania, Glam rock, Punk, New Romantics and
Electropop. But what's happening now?
Dagger:
Well I don't think kids are very much into music anymore. It
doesn't seem to figure highly on their ... it's so easy and
accessible and free now, on the radio, internet, mobile phones,
TV, everywhere.
Digger:
I was on YouTube and I was looking at some videos of Petula Clark
performances.
Dagger:
Oh yeah, I'm a big fan of Petula Clark.
Digger:
She was doing Downtown on there and people had posted some comments
underneath, and the person that posted the video had a completely
inaccurate description of the video. And these kids have
everything available but they don't know the detail or check their
facts or do the research. And errors just get taken as fact. It
was in colour and they said it was from Top of the Pops in '64.
Britain didn't have colour TV until '67 and not regular
transmissions until '68.
Dagger:
Downtown couldn't have been in colour on Top of the Pops. It
annoys me when I hear DJs on the radio getting years wrong and
getting all kind of details wrong. I feel like ringing them up.
Digger:
Yeah. We are pedantic old gits aren't we? "And another
thing!..."
Dagger:
It doesn't do any harm to get things right.
Digger: Do you have any words of Nick Dagger wisdom for your
millions of adoring fans?
Dagger: Well, what
wisdom can I pass on? If they look at me and think "Good God,
how does he do that at that age?" Being 56 and doing what I
do is quite an achievement. I know lots of my mates of 46 couldn't
do it.
It's the same old piece of advice that I'm sure everybody gives,
and that's if you're gonna do something that you really have a
love for as a subject, which I do, then you're gonna a give it
your best shot.
Digger: Do you think you've got bigger success to
come?
Dagger: I think it's certainly
going in that direction. I don't think it will ever reach much
higher than a good UK theatre tour. We do stuff abroad but it's
never gonna be a big tour. If The Stones had split up, then yeah,
I could have got onto people straight away who would be interested
in us touring. The Stones kinds of queered our pitch a bit by
getting all this resurgence of energy.
Digger: Yes, who the hell do they think they are?
Dagger: We do Holland and festivals
in Belgium with some quite big acts. We supported ZZ Top, Blur,
Bryan Adams, Joe Cocker, Iggy Popp, and I like to think we hold
our own. Because you can't not like The Stones if they're played
well and there's a bit of an act to go with it.
Digger: You've got the formula right, that's for
sure. I reckon with playing day in and day out you must be better
than them.
Dagger:
A lot of big acts don't work as much as we do. We feel rusty if
we haven't gigged for two weeks. Some of these acts haven't been
on the road for two years. If you've been touring solidly for 14
years, you're quite a well-oiled machine aren't you? And
we're used to not having the best conditions sometimes. Not the
best amps, not the best mics, not the best lighting.
Digger:
The wrong shaped sandwiches?.......
Dagger:
(Laughs) What's that little man doing in my olives? I love that
movie (Spinal Tap). I have been in one of these festival dressing
rooms where you can hear the other acts in the other dressing
rooms and their moans and groans and they really do get like
that about the detail and they're not really worried about the important
stuff. They are worried that the Quorn sausages aren't the right
ones. We watched them building Bryan Adams' dressing room and
they started at 8 in the morning and they told us if we wanted a
sound check we had to do it first thing in the morning because
when Bryan's team arrived we wouldn't get a look in. We got down
there at 8 and there were carpenters, people bringing in rubber
plants and then his chef arrived and they spent all day putting
this structure together. Bryan Adams flew in on an executive
jet, popped his head in the door, changed his T-shirt, did an
hour, went back into the room and changed his T-shirt again and
then f***ed off. He didn't even say hello to us. I thought what
a waste of a room. Thanks Bryan, we could have used that!
