Jagger gets on up to pay tribute to the Godfather of Soul

Mick Jagger has just celebrated his 72nd birthday. For a great-grandfather who has been dancing and carrying on for most of his life, he looks by far the youngest 72-year-old in New York.

Jagger is in New York to attend the premiere of Get On Up, a film he co-produced about the life of soul singer James Brown, who was one of Jagger's early influences.

''I'd met him and hung out with him," he said. ''He was a full-on, super high-energy stage performer and I always admired the way he danced, the way he played an audience, the way he gave 100% and was always trying to do new things. "

Get On Up, which was in the works for 12 years, follows Brown's life from his childhood of abandonment and abuse through reform school and prison to his becoming one of the most influential figures in 20th-century music, known as Mr Dynamite and the Godfather of Soul.

Jagger admitted he based some of his own stage performances on Brown's, although, he said with a laugh, ''James Brown was still doing the splits when he was quite old, which I could never do". And, he said, still laughing, "My parents were slightly different from his."