Yes Sir! Mick Jagger: I could have been a teacher

Rolling Stone Mick Jagger (Getty Images)

Rolling Stones frontman Sir Mick Jagger has admitted he finds his music career "intellectually undemanding" and said his original idea of becoming a teacher might have been a "gratifying" alternative.

In an interview on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, the veteran rocker said he considered a career as a dancer but was put off by the prospect of "so many injuries".

Jagger, who was still a student at the London School of Economics when the Stones were starting out, told John Humphrys: "A schoolteacher would have been very gratifying, I'm sure.

"There are millions of things you would have loved to have done, a politician, a journalist... I thought of being a journalist once.

"All these things you think of when you're a teenager, you can think, well, I would have liked to have done that but that's completely pointless but I don't feel frustrated for a lack of control at all and I'm very pleased with what I've done.

"Everyone wants to have done more things in their lives. It is a slightly intellectually undemanding thing to do, being a rock singer, but, you know, you make the best of it."

The full interview will be broadcast on the show tomorrow ahead of the band's headline performance at Glastonbury.

In an interview for Radio 1's Newsbeat bulletin, Stones guitarist Keith Richards said he did have concerns about the weather for their Glastonbury performance.

"I think the only pressure we feel is that it is the first time we've done an outdoor show for yonks and English weather," he said.

"Throwing in those two equations, yeah, there is maybe a little apprehension."

He brushed off any concerns about the event being headlined by a band whose four core members are aged between 66 and 72.

Richards joked: "It's good for your health to play rock'n'roll in a clean-living band like the Rolling Stones. You should try it. It's better than church."

And he added: "In a way, it's kind of weird that at last we've made it to Glastonbury. It's like building Stonehenge, right?"

PA