Senator Al Franken Does a Pitch Perfect Imitation of Mick Jagger (1982)

If Sen­a­tor Al Franken won’t run for Pres­i­dent in 2020, per­haps he’d tem­per fans’ dis­ap­point­ment with a repeat of his ear­ly 80’s turn as Mick Jag­ger, above.

The per­for­mance took place at Stock­ton State, a pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty con­ve­nient­ly locat­ed in New Jersey–what the late Tom Davis, Franken’s long time Sat­ur­day Night Live writ­ing part­ner and Kei­th Richards to his Jag­ger called “the Blair Witch scrub forests twen­ty-five miles north of Atlantic City.”

Franken’s per­for­mance is an immer­sive tri­umph, espe­cial­ly for those who remem­ber his best known SNL char­ac­ter, the lisp­ing­ly upbeat Stu­art Smal­l­ey.

His Jag­ger is the oppo­site of Stuart–butch, preen­ing, ath­let­ic … a less than sober stu­dent fan in the Stock­ton State crowd might have drunk­en­ly won­dered if he or she had acci­den­tal­ly bought tick­ets to the Tat­too You tour. Those lips are pret­ty con­vinc­ing.

The cos­tum­ing is dead on too, and Franken did not take the route Chris Far­ley would lat­er take, lam­poon­ing the male strip­pers of Chip­pen­dales. He may not be Jag­ger-rangy, but he’s cer­tain­ly fit in an out­fit that leaves no room to hide.

As Davis recalled in his 2010 mem­oir, Thir­ty-Nine Years of Short-Term Mem­o­ry Loss: The Ear­ly Days of SNL from Some­one Who Was There:

As we start­ed “Under My Thumb,” Franken came run­ning out as Mick Jag­ger, wear­ing yel­low foot­ball pants and Capezios and was so good, it was scary. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Franken and Davis at Stock­ton State nev­er sold very well… maybe it would be re-released if one of us became pres­i­dent, or shot a pres­i­dent.

Know­ing that Davis, who died five years ago, would like­ly nev­er have pre­dict­ed the out­come of the recent elec­tion, and that Sen­a­tor Franken, out­spo­ken as he is, is in no posi­tion to joke about the sec­ond option, we sug­gest truf­fling up a used copy, if you’d like to see more.

And for comparison’s sake, here are the orig­i­nals per­form­ing to an are­na-sized crowd in Ari­zona in 1981:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mick Jag­ger Defends the Rights of the Indi­vid­ual After His Leg­endary 1967 Drug Bust

When Bowie & Jagger’s “Danc­ing in the Street” Music Video Becomes a Silent Film: Can the Worst Music Video Ever Get Even Worse?

When William S. Bur­roughs Appeared on Sat­ur­day Night Live: His First TV Appear­ance (1981)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.