There are some outlandish stories about Mick Jagger that are actually true, but we're here
to debunk the most widely believed false rumors about the iconic Rolling Stones singer.
So keep watching to discover what's true and what's not true about Sir Mick.
Jagger was good friends with fellow rock god David Bowie, even outside of their professional
collaborations.
As Jagger wrote in Rolling Stone in 2016 following Bowie's passing,
"We used to hang out in London a lot in the early days of the Seventies; we were at a
lot of parties together [...] We were very close in the Eighties in New York.
We’d hang out a lot and go out to dance clubs."
Jagger and Bowie were so close that there have been rumors that their friendship was
more than purely platonic.
In May 1990, Bowie's ex-wife Angela appeared on Joan Rivers' talk show alongside Howard
Stern.
Seemingly egged on to reveal some lewd gossip, Angela declared that she had found her husband
in bed with men on several occasions.
"In fact, one of the best times I caught him in bed was with Mick Jagger."
Both Jagger and Bowie brushed off this allegation as false, and Angela also ultimately backtracked.
Only a week later, she appeared on Geraldo Rivera's talk show, where she confessed that
she hadn't caught them in the act of making love.
They were in bed together, but nothing more.
It was a hoax that fooled an entire generation.
In the late '60s, rumors started flying that a supergroup met up in Canada to record a
bootleg album.
The band supposedly featured the likes of Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Paul
McCartney, and George Harrison.
In October 1969, Rolling Stone critic Greil Marcus wrote a joke review of an album that
didn't exist called Masked Marauders, which included the line,
"It can truly be said that this album is more than a way of life; it is life."
Sure enough, readers immediately began calling the magazine's offices, demanding to know
when the record was set to come out.
Realizing that the gag had gone too far, Marcus enlisted the help of some Berkeley, California
musicians to record an actual album.
Remarkably, the band nailed the voices of the famous musicians, and the tape even received
local radio airplay.
It was eventually bought by Warner Brothers and released as an album.
So this one isn't a total lie, but it's far from being true in the way that it was originally
advertised.
When it comes to The Rolling Stones' image, they aren't exactly The Beach Boys.
While the Californian crooners were promoting their good vibrations, The Stones were invoking
devilish imagery.
One person who hasn't been much of a fan of the Stones and Jagger in particular is none
other than Queen Elizabeth.
As journalist Harold Brooks-Baker revealed in the book Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius
of Jagger,
"The Queen could tolerate the Beatles because they were clean cut [...] The Stones were
an entirely different matter."
So what exactly did Jagger have to do with the Queen, besides being one of her subjects?
As it turns out, her objection wasn't just a matter of the Stones' bad-boy image.
Jagger had a bit of an ambiguous relationship with the Queen's sister, Princess Margaret.
The pair would often talk on the phone, with Jagger even getting invited to social events.
Unsurprisingly, the Queen wasn't amused.
As Brooks-Baker put it,
"Princess Margaret caused more than her share of scandal.
The last thing the Queen wanted was her sister running off with Mick Jagger!"
Queen Elizabeth's resentment toward the singer has lasted decades.
In 2003, she even declined to knight him, as she didn't have the stomach for it, leaving
the task instead to her son Prince Charles.
It certainly doesn't help that Jagger once called her "Chief Witch."
When anybody mentions The Rolling Stones, the first two names that come to mind are
of course Mick Jagger and lead guitarist Keith Richards.
The two have had perhaps the longest-running partnership in modern musical history.
While they're responsible for writing timeless hits like "Satisfaction" together, there was
actually another ringleader in the band's early days: side guitarist and jack-of-all-trades,
Brian Jones.
In a 2019 interview with Yahoo!, Bill Wyman, the Stones' original bassist, revealed that
Jones led the band until his death in 1969.
As he put it,
"Everybody thinks that it was Mick and Keith's band, but it was Brian's band [...] He chose
the music.
He chose the name.
He was the leader.
He signed all the recording contracts, the management contracts, all kinds of things."
And in fact, Jagger himself is quick to give credit where credit is due.
In 1995, he told Rolling Stone,
"[Jones] had a huge contribution in the early days.
He was very obsessed with it, which you always need [...] He was obsessed.
Too obsessed for me.
There's a certain enthusiasm, and after that it becomes obsession [...] You can't be jealous
and be a leader.
He was obsessed with the idea of being the leader of the band."
In a 2003 BBC interview, Jagger recalled Jones' uncomfortable relationship with being famous.
"Fame doesn't sit very comfortably on anyone's shoulders."
"I don't think it suited him."
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards go way back.
As Jagger told Rolling Stone in 1995,
"I can’t remember when I didn’t know him.
We lived one street away; his mother knew my mother, and we were at primary school together
from [ages] 7 to 11.
We used to play together, and we weren’t the closest friends, but we were friends [...] Keith
always played the guitar, from even when he was 5."
Like almost all long-lasting friendships, though, the two icons have done their share
of bickering, with Richards having said some pretty hurtful things about his bandmate.
In his 2010 memoir Life, he unabashedly wrote,
"It was the beginning of the '80s when Mick started to become unbearable."
He also noted that Jagger had developed a "swollen head" and an "inflated ego."
And he included this punch to the gut:
"I used to love to hang with Mick, but I haven't gone to his dressing room in, I don't think,
twenty years.
Sometimes I miss my friend.
Where the hell did he go?"
So he's often critical of you then?"
"He's not happy."
In 2016, journalist Rich Cohen revealed in Vanity Fair that he spoke to Jagger after
Richards' memoir was published, noting that Jagger was, quote, "sorrowful" about his bandmate's
words.
It took Richards a couple of years before he offered something resembling an apology.
As he told Rolling Stone in 2012,
"As far as the book goes, it was my story and it was very raw, as I meant it to be,
but I know that some parts of it and some of the publicity really offended Mick and
I regret that."
Jagger has reached such mythical status as a rock icon that entire generations don't
know of a world in which he doesn't exist.
As Rich Cohen put it in Vanity Fair,
"Mick is Elvis in a gold lamé jacket.
Mick is Michael Jackson moonwalking across time.
One in a million, a freak of nature."
With all that being said, has Jagger always been a rebel?
As it turns out, not quite.
As Philip Norman wrote in his biography of Jagger that while the singer was still just
a schoolboy, he was actually quite tame.
He wasn't rebellious at all, but was instead quite pleasant, as well as self-conscious
and shy among strangers.
"I'm too scared."
Jagger himself echoed a similar sentiment while speaking to Rolling Stone in 1995, as
he noted that only after he turned 18 and started playing clubs did he start to get
female attention.
As he put it,
"You're going, 'Well, this is good.
You know, this is something else.'
At that age you're just so impressed, especially if you've been rather shy before."
In an alternate universe, would Jagger have still ended up a famous celebrity?
His answer may surprise you.
In 2013, he told BBC Radio 4's Today,
"A schoolteacher would have been very gratifying, I'm sure.
There are millions of things you would have loved to have done, a politician, a journalist...
I thought of being a journalist once [...] It is a slightly intellectually undemanding thing
to do, being a rock singer, but, you know, you make the best of it."
In 1973, The Rolling Stones released the acoustic rock song "Angie" off the album Goats Head
Soup.
Ever since its release, fans have wondered who the enigmatic Angie in question is, with
many concluding that it's actually about David Bowie's ex-wife Angela.
According to Stereogum, rumor has it that after Angela caught her husband and Jagger
in bed together, The Stones wrote her a song so as to bribe her to not say a word about
it.
Although this scuttlebutt may have made for a fantastic story, it's most likely not authentic.
Keith Richards wrote about the making of "Angie" in his memoir Life, explaining that the song
was mostly written by him, not Jagger.
It was during a time when he was in a rehab clinic, sitting in bed with his guitar.
As he explained,
"I just went, 'Angie, Angie.'
It was not about any particular person; it was a name, like, 'ohhh, Diana.'"
Coincidentally, Richards has a daughter named Angela, and she was born around the same time
that he was at the treatment center.
There are some other rumors about "Angie" out there, but the fact of the matter is that
it most likely has nothing to do with any salacious secret.
If you believe everything you've ever heard about Mick Jagger, like how he's slept with
an estimated 4,000 women, then you surely think of him as the quintessential rock star.
And even if you don't know what's gone on behind the scenes, his stage presence should
still be enough to convince you.
While he undoubtedly deserves his status as an effortlessly cool singer, some fans might
be surprised to learn that he can actually be quite pensive as well.
A 1995 interview with Rolling Stone noted Jagger's, quote, "natural reserve."
Furthermore, he noted that he wasn't even entirely committed to playing in The Stones
when they were first taking off, as he was studying at the London School of Economics.
As he recalled,
"Keith [Richards] and Brian [Jones] didn't have anything else to do, so they wanted to
rehearse all the time.
I liked to rehearse once a week and do a show Saturday."
Despite Jagger's reservations, it looks like being on stage pushed him out of his shell.
As he told Rolling Stone,
"I used to do mad things – you know, I used to go and do these shows and go on my knees
and roll on the ground – when I was 15,16 years old.
And my parents were extremely disapproving of it all.
Because it was just not done.
This was for very low-class people, remember.
Rock & roll singers weren’t educated people."
He added,
"I didn’t have any inhibitions.
I saw Elvis and Gene Vincent, and I thought, 'Well, I can do this.'"
There's no denying that there was a dizzying amount of self-indulgent partying to be had
while The Rolling Stones were at the peak of their success.
But Jagger has made sure to make time for a quieter pastime in between all his trysts,
as he loves to crack open a good book.
As he revealed in an early TV interview,
"One of the best distractions is reading, which I think is better than TV because we
really need to get away from the century."
That wasn't the only time Jagger chatted about this particular hobby.
In 1995, he told Rolling Stone that he's a fan of Russian writer Alexander Pushkin, as
he praised his use of personal experiences embellished with imagination.
Jagger's former girlfriend Marianne Faithfull was also a big influence on his love of literature,
especially around the time that The Rolling Stones' 1968 album Beggars Banquet was being
recorded.
He recalled to Rolling Stone,
"I was just writing a lot, reading a lot.
I was educating myself.
I was reading a lot of poetry, I was reading a lot of philosophy."
In fact, it's thanks to Faithfull that Jagger read the 1967 Russian novel The Master and
Margarita, which sparked his imagination and inspired him to write the Stones classic "Sympathy
for the Devil."
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