Photo: Taken by Christof Graf – Stuttgart 2018

Leonard Cohen On Mick Jagger & The Rolling Stones:

I met Mick Jagger once in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel and he said, ‘Are you in New York for a poetry reading?’ There’s some of their songs I like very much. I think it’s wonderful the phenomenon of the Rolling Stones – the figure of Mick Jagger. They are the bread and wine of the pop groups. I was a little bit older than other people when I came into contact with these figures, and I’d already had my mind blown by older and much more outrageous people that I’d met in my youth, so I wasn’t about to succumb to the kind of fever that they produce in younger people. But I’ve always admired them from the slightly humourous point of view. I never did seriously ask myself if Mick Jagger was the Devil. But I think as figures they’re mighty interesting.

SOURCE:

ZIGZAG, Leonard Cohen Interview: September 15, 1974 by Robin Pike (ZigZag, Oct 1974).