Time Essay: The Stones and the Triumph of Marsyas

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An essential part of Jagger's act is his vulnerability. He is a butterfly for sexual lepidopterists, strutting and jackknifing across the stage in a cloud of scarf and glitter, pinned by the spotlights. Nonresponsibility is written into his whole relationship with the audience, over which he has less control than any comparable idol in rock history; Elvis Presley, who can still tune the fans up and down like a technician twisting a dial, is the opposite. Jagger's act is to put himself out like bait and flick away just as the jaws are about to close and the audience comes breaking ravenously over the stage. No other singer alive has transformed arrogance into such a sexual turn-on: it is the essence of performance, of mask wearing and play, and the spectacle has a curiously private appearance, as though the secret history of a polymorphic, unrepressed child were being enacted by an adult. (His narcissism is such that Jagger married himself, or a close facsimile: Bianca Jagger could be his twin.)

What still confounds the audience is Jagger's ripe compound of menace and energy; he seems an ultraviolent wraith from Fetish Alley. As king bitch of rock, Jagger has no equals and no visible successors, and at least one of his songs has to be autobiographical:

/ was raised by a toothless bearded hag

I was schooled with a strap across my back

But it's all right now

In fact, it's a gas

But it's all right

I'm Jumpin' Jack Flash

It's a gas, gas, gas . . .