Mick Jagger Biography

Sir Michael "Mick" Philip Jagger (born July 26, 1943 in Dartford, Kent, England) is a British rock musician, actor, writer, composer and producer. But most famous for being the lead singer (and harmonica player) of the Rolling Stones.

Biography

Mick Jagger was born in Dartford, Kent, England to Joe and the late Eva Jagger, and he has a younger brother, Christopher Jagger. Mick discovered early rock & roll music during his teenage years and formed the band Little Boy Blue & the Blue Boys.

In his late teens while at Dartford Grammar School for Boys, he met up with future Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, who he had first met years before when they both attended the Wentworth County Junior School in Dartford. They started the band shortly thereafter, due to their mutual love of rock & roll and blues. They practised at Mick Jagger's place. They needed money for better instruments. Mick Jagger's parents decided to lend the band money for new instruments.

Mick Jagger then attended the London School of Economics, where he studied Economics.

During the 1960s he was linked romantically with Chrissie Shrimpton, (the sister of supermodel Jean Shrimpton) and then with singer Marianne Faithfull, for whom Jagger and Richards composed several songs, including her signature tune, As Tears Go By. They remained a couple until late 1969, when Jagger and Faithfull travelled to Australia to star in the Tony Richardson film Ned Kelly. Soon after their arrival in Sydney, Faithfull overdosed on sleeping pills and almost died. The relationship was over by the time she was sent home to England to recuperate. Jagger then embarked on a series of liaisons, including rumoured dalliances with Richards' girlfriend at the time, Anita Pallenberg, and singers Merry Clayton and Marsha Hunt.

In 1970, Mick Jagger bought the rights to the story and characters of the Burgess novel 'A Clockwork Orange' for a mere US$500 after Burgess became rather desperate for money. Jagger intended to make the films with his own band as the 'Droogs', but rights switched hands until it ended with the Kubrick film version in 1971.

In 1967 Mick Jagger and Richards were arrested and charged with drug possession after a highly publicised raid on Richards' country house, during which it was alleged that Faithfull was found naked except for a fur rug wrapped around her. The raid was later revealed to have been prompted by a tip-off to the London Drug Squad by journalists working for Rupert Murdoch's News Of The World, which at the time was running a series of lurid reports about the alleged use of illegal drugs by British pop stars.

In one of these reports, Jagger was alleged to have spent an evening at a London club in the company of a Murdoch journalist, during which he openly discussed his drug-taking and invited others back to his flat "for a smoke". When the report was published, it became obvious that the hapless journalist had mistaken Brian Jones for Jagger -- who promptly sued News Of The World for defamation.

But this legal action was stymied by his and Richards' subsequent arrest. The trial made front-page news around the world. Despite Jagger claiming that the pills allegedly found in his possession had been prescribed to him, both were found guilty.

The severity of the sentences handed down (imprisonment with hard labour) caused a huge public outcry. It was also the subject of the famous leader by William Rees-Mogg, editor of The Times. Titled "Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel," Rees-Mogg asserted that it was Jagger's and Richards' celebrity that made them targets, and that their sentences for first offences were more harsh than what "any purely anonymous young man" would have received. Their convictions were overturned on appeal, and they subsequently were released, though the other person arrested with them, noted London art dealer Robert Fraser, served six months.

It was during this period that Mick Jagger took over as the effective leader of The Rolling Stones, as founder Brian Jones became more and more incapacitated by his spiralling drug use. Jones left the band in early 1969 and accidentally drowned in his swimming pool only weeks later (though rumours persist that he was murdered).

Mick Jagger's first child, Karis Jagger (by singer Marsha Hunt), was born in 1970. In May 1971 he married Bianca Perez Morena de Macias, and she gave birth to their daughter, Jade Jagger, later that same year, the same year the band released Sticky Fingers, one of their most popular albums. Between 1990-1999, he was married to model/TV hostess Jerry Hall, and they had four more children, Elizabeth Scarlett, Georgia May Ayeesha, Gabriel Luke Beauegard and James Leroy Augustine Jagger. A brief affair with Brazilian model and TV presenter Luciana Gimenez resulted in the birth of Lucas Jagger (1999). L'Wren Scott, born Luann Bambrough, is a former model and now a fashion stylist who lives in Hollywood. She is Mick's current "main person of interest" for the past few years.

Like the other members of the Rolling Stones, Jagger is often subject to satire and/or ridicule for the fact that he is still performing rock music at a mature age, behaving in his usual energetic and dramatic way onstage.

Mick Jagger was knighted on 12 December 2003, for his "services to popular music" [1]. His fellow rolling stone Keith Richards was unimpressed, describing it as a "paltry honour". ("I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the Establishment ... It's not what the Stones is about, is it? ... I don't want to step out on stage with someone wearing a f*****g coronet and sporting the old ermine. I told Mick, 'It's a f*****g paltry honour'.")