There was a day when Steve Jobs and Mick Jagger met in the same room. Even if what came out of it wasn’t really fruitful. Instead, it ended with awkward silence and an impromptu computer session with the singer’s own daughter. I have worked with the Apple teams for nineteen years and I have followed the bosses of Cupertino for nineteen years and I have never heard such an amazing story. And that’s without forgetting anecdotes like the hidden Porsches that earned him a million dollar contract.
To put us in perspective, everything goes back to January 1984. The introduction of the first Macintosh could change everything within the company. Apple is organizing a small presentation tour with illustrious personalities. The typical thing to ask in front of the national press. And of course, one of them was Mick Jagger, genius and figure.
A Macintosh for Mick Jagger?
Let’s travel to this first week of January. While Steve Jobs, Mike Murray and Bob Belleville run their own event from New York, engineer Andy Hertzfeld is hard at work on launch preparations from the Cupertino offices. That morning, he arrived at the office much later than usual: The night before he had been beaten until 3 a.m. review applications and the operating system in general.
But as he goes to sit down at his desk, he comes across a note. A handwritten note from Software Librarian, Patti King:. And it says this: “Andy, Steve J. called, we can deliver a Mac to Mick Jagger tomorrow. You can fly out to meet them tomorrow at noon and bring a bunch of software. If you can come, arrange your trip through Lynn. Steve will call back in a few hours. “He’ll be at the Carlyle Hotel tomorrow.”
According to Andy himself, It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.. This message, written by Steve Jobs’ secretary, Lynn Takahashi, was part of a larger campaign. Two days before, they had presented a Macintosh to Andy Warhol himself and he loved it. In fact, he was the one who came up with the idea: “you should show it to Mick”. And that’s what he did. He got up and began to organize the preparations.
Although in 1984 the Rolling Stones were going through their own creative crisis, moving towards a lighter version of their usual style, less rock and more folk, by this time they had nothing left to prove. AND Mick Jagger was one of the most notorious personalities on the planet. Time is running out and the deadline to get everything ready for launch is Monday, January 16 at 6 a.m. And stealing a few days just to show Jagger a Mac meant losing two days of work.
Anyway, the plane landed, Andy handed over the tools and Steve Jobs, Mike Murray and Bill Atkinson loaded up his Mac to take it to Mick Jagger’s house. And pay close attention to the original story:
“They knocked on the door at the address given to them, but there was no answer for several minutes. Eventually the door was opened by two huge guys who were obviously bodyguards and who didn’t seem very impressed to talk to the co-founder of Apple Computer and those around him.”
After waiting, they finally got in, climbed several flights of stairs until they reached an elegant room, and waited in silence while good old Bill Atkinson launched MacPaint and played with different programs.
“I think he was on drugs. Either that or he has brain damage.”
And then the debacle began: Mick Jagger burst in in his usual blue jeans and greeted politely, but didn’t seem to articulate any sentences skillfully. And it doesn’t seem to be a matter of apathy towards technology, but rather an addiction:
“His speech was difficult and very slow.” “Actually, I think he was on drugs. Either that or he’s brain damaged.”. -Steve Jobs
A little lack, it must be said. And even more so since Steve has never exactly been a stranger to narcotics. After a few minutes, Apple officials realized how little Mick cared about anything that had to do with Apple and this powerful computer that would change technology trends at the user level. There was an awkward silence that lasted forever and was only broken by Jade., Jagger’s daughter, who had followed her father into the room. Curiosity actually saved the scene.
Jagger’s daughter was dazzled by Apple
If the father’s attitude was one of absolute disinterest, the young girl was captivated: “her eyes lit up when she saw the MacPaint”. Bill took advantage of the situation and explained to her how to use the application and, after a few minutes, the young woman already understood perfectly how this versatile graphic editor worked. Jagger went to another room and eventually the whole Apple team stayed with Jade for another half hour, answering different questions.
Born in October 1971, Jade was 12 years old at the time. Fascinated by the possibilities of MacPaint, the Apple team limited itself to “selling” this equipment to what would in the future become a prestigious model and fashion designer. Shortly after, they left and nothing more was known about them. there was not backneither positive nor negative. A somewhat strange encounter where there was no shortage of taunts.
In fact, this is not the only time the two personalities have coincided. In 2008, Steve Jobs met Mick Jagger again at a roundtable on online commerce in Brussels, as reported by the European Commission. But We’re surprised Jobs reminded Jagger of that old afternoon, let alone know how the initial meeting ended.
Cover | Steve Jobs (Reddit) / Image of Mick Jagger: original by Jerzy Bednarski (Wikipedia)
An older version of this article was originally published on 04/08/2023.
In Applesfera | Apple Lisa turns 40 but we weren’t told this story: the truth behind her name
In Applesfera | Steve Jobs chose the name Apple to “hack” the phone book and present himself to this rival company
