Paul Simon is many things, but hard-rocking frontman is not one of them.
That's not to say that the legendary songwriter isn't an icon in his own right, or that he didn't look up to rock and rollers just the same. But, there's one quintessential rock star that failed to impress Simon despite his enormous musical and cultural impact: The Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger.
In 1984, Simon spoke with Playboy about many of his predecessors and contemporaries, and when asked for his thoughts on Jagger, the famed songwriter delivered a strikingly blunt assessment.
"He's not very interesting to me as an artist," Simon said at the time, before acknowledging the difficulty of sustaining a long career. "I give him his due: I know how difficult it is to keep up your energy and to keep growing, and he has."
Still, Simon made it clear that admiration only went so far. "I guess I don't like what he stands for," he continued, pointing to Jagger’s immense cultural influence on generations of performers. Simon noted the singer's role in shaping rock's visual and emotional language, particularly through what he described as a deliberate presentation of androgyny and rebellion.
"You can see his influence on almost every lead singer—a certain androgyny, or bisexuality, flaunted," Simon said. He credited Jagger with originality and irony, but argued that the larger legacy was more troubling. "What he really contributed was something of little value—the pose of anger and rebellion."
According to Simon, Jagger was "sophisticated enough to use that to earn huge sums of money," but the message, once absorbed by others, often became distorted. "Others took it to mean they should be rebellious, cruel, disdainful, and misogynous," he said.
Simon widened the lens further by connecting his critique to the broader mythology of rock fame, drawing a comparison to Elvis Presley. While acknowledging how deeply he once idolized Presley, Simon described the cautionary lesson he believed Presley’s life ultimately represented—one of isolation, excess, and unchecked indulgence.
For modern readers, the remarks offer a rare glimpse into how one of the era's most thoughtful artists viewed the cultural cost of rock rebellion at its peak. Rather than a personal attack, Simon's words read as a meditation on influence, responsibility, and the unintended consequences of celebrity—an argument that still resonates decades later.
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