Football legend Ian Wright reveals how he became friends with Mick Jagger
Ian Wright has opened up about how he became friends with the Rolling Stones frontman and rock legend Mick Jagger.
While appearing as a guest on a special pre-season edition of the Stick to Football podcast, the football legend was joined by Gary Neville, Jill Scott, Roy Keane and Wayne Rooney. After being asked who he would swap lives with for the day, Wright chose Jagger and explained how he befriended the ‘Paint It Black’ singer.
“I’ll probably go Mick Jagger. What a life Mick Jagger has had. Jesus, definitely Mick Jagger. He’s the one that is coming to my head as the kind of life you think ‘Wow that’s amazing’, he’s still doing it, man. Still cranking out unbelievable songs,” he replied.
He continued: “Do you know what I remember, during the ’98 World Cup when I got injured out of it, I remember I got a call from someone and they were saying ‘Listen, I represent Mick Jagger, he wants to give you a call,’ and I said ‘Yeah, that’s fine’ and so the person called back and sounded like Mick Jagger and I was like ‘Stop fucking about’ and so I put the phone down and it came back and the person said ‘Ian, honestly, seriously Mick, he wants to speak with you about something, he’s got to have a word with a French TV company and he wants to have a couple of lines.’
“And so I said ‘Yeah, fine’, and so he came on and I said, ‘Listen, just say I’m just really excited about the youngster’ – you know Michael Owen had just come in to the team.”
“I remember I was on a motorbike trip to Barcelona and Mick Jagger was staying next door and he knew I was staying next door and then he came across with me and my mates in there and knocked on the door and said ‘Listen, all of you are invited to the concert’ and I couldn’t believe it! Like, Mick Jagger is my friend off the back of that. Since then, he’s always been someone who is at the forefront of my mind.”
Elsewhere, PR giant Alan Edwards opened up about his experience being mentored by the rock icon himself.
“I was! To work with them, he flew me out to New York and I had to go through an extraordinary set of interviews. I met him in a room in the Dakota building which was bigger than most of the gigs I’ve been to, and he fired questions at me for 45 minutes. Questions like, ‘What’s the biggest newspaper in Italy?’ It was like sitting for an A-Level in media,” he told NME.
In other Rolling Stones news, guitarist Ronnie Wood’s son recently married Iron Maiden’s bassist Steve Harris’ daughter.
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Anagricel Duran
NME
