When you’re as famous as Mick Hucknall and you’ve sold 60 million albums, you’re allowed to tell rock ‘n’ roll anecdotes. In the process of listing Hucknall’s 10 life-changing songs (see below), he, perhaps unsurprisingly, mentions the Beatles and the Stones. Then, casual as you like, recalls the afternoon he spent rolling spliffs for Keith Richards by the swimming pool at the Hyatt Sunset Hotel in LA.
“The Beatles changed the way music sounded, but the Stones were the world’s greatest rock band,” explains the 62-year-old. As the outspoken frontman with the phenomenally successful blue-eyed soul boys, Simply Red, Hucknall might occasionally come across as “one of them mainstream ‘80s arseholes” (his words, not mine), but it’s patently obvious that he is a serious music fan.
