Mick Jagger

Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger (born 26 July 1943) is an English musician, singer-songwriter, actor and producer, best known as the lead vocalist of rock band The Rolling Stones. Jagger has also acted in and produced several films. His father, Basil Fanshawe ("Joe") Jagger (13 April 1913 – 11 November 2006), and his paternal grandfather, David Ernest Jagger, were both teachers. His mother, Eva Ensley Mary (6 April 1913 – 18 May 2000), born in New South Wales, Australia, was a hairdresser and an active member of the Conservative Party. Jagger is the elder of two sons (his brother Chris Jagger was born on 19 December 1947) and was raised to follow in his father's career path.


From September 1950, Keith Richards and Jagger (known as "Mike" to his friends) were classmates at Wentworth Primary School in Dartford, Kent. In 1954, Jagger passed the eleven-plus, and went to Dartford Grammar School, where there is now The Mick Jagger Centre, as part of the school. Having lost contact with each other when they went to different schools, Richards and Jagger resumed their friendship in July 1960 after a chance encounter and discovered that they had both developed a love for rhythm and blues music, which began for Jagger with Little Richard. Jagger left school in 1961.

He obtained seven O-levels and three A-levels. Jagger and Richards moved into a flat in Edith Grove in Chelsea with a guitarist they had encountered named Brian Jones. While Richards and Jones were making plans to start their own rhythm and blues group, Jagger continued his business courses at the London School of Economics, and had seriously considered becoming either a journalist or a politician. Jagger had compared the latter to a pop star.

Jagger has always been considered one of rock's best businessmen, and The Rolling Stones rank with The Beatles among the most successful acts in history. The group has continued to tour into their sixties, and in 2006 the Stones played the halftime show at Super Bowl XL. From the time that the Rolling Stones developed their anti-establishment image in the mid-1960s, Mick Jagger, along with guitarist Keith Richards, has been an enduring icon of the counterculture. This was no doubt enhanced by his controversial drug-related arrests, sexually charged onstage antics, provocative song lyrics, and his role of the bisexual Turner in the 1970 film Performance. One of his biographers, Christopher Andersen, describes him as being "one of the dominant cultural figures of our time", adding that Jagger was "the story of a generation".

In their earliest days, the members played for no money in the interval of Alexis Korner's gigs at a basement club opposite Ealing Broadway tube station (subsequently called "Ferry's" club). At the time, the group had very little equipment and needed to borrow Alexis' gear to play. This was before Andrew Loog Oldham became their manager. The group’s first appearance under the name The Rollin' Stones (after one of their favourite Muddy Waters tunes) was at the Marquee Club, a jazz club, on 12 July 1962. They would later change their name to “The Rolling Stones” as it seemed more formal. Victor Bockris states that the band members included Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart on piano, Dick Taylor on bass and Tony Chapman on drums.

After Jones' death and their move in 1971 to the south of France as tax exiles, Jagger and the rest of the band changed their look and style as the 1970s progressed. For the Rolling Stones' highly publicised 1972 American tour, Jagger wore glam-rock clothing and glittery makeup on stage. Later in the decade, they ventured into genres like disco and punk with the album Some Girls (1978). Their interest in the blues, however, had been made manifest in the 1972 album Exile on Main St.

Wandering Spirit was the third solo album by Jagger and was released in 1993. It would be his only solo album release of the 1990s. Jagger aimed to re-introduce himself as a solo artist in a musical climate vastly changed from what had witnessed the release of his first two projects, She's the Boss and Primitive Cool. On 26 September 2007, The Rolling Stones made US$437 million on their A Bigger Bang Tour, which got them into the current edition of Guinness World Records for the most lucrative music tour. Jagger has refused to say when the band will finally retire, stating in 2007: "I'm sure the Rolling Stones will do more things and more records and more tours. We've got no plans to stop any of that really." On 20 May 2011, Jagger announced the formation of a new supergroup, the first band he had formed since the Rolling Stones. The band, Super Heavy includes Dave Stewart, Joss Stone, Damian Marley, and A.R. Rahman.