Mick Jagger: A Look Back at His Illustrious Career
Mick peacocks across Top 40 radio with the sleepwalk sex swagger of “Honky Tonk Women,” where the poor boy sounds exhausted by his busy bed-hopping schedule. He leers over the guitars and cowbell, as if if he’s slipping into a post-coital coma, chewing up the punchline: “She blew my nose and then she blew my mind.
While they were in their college years, Jagger serendipitously ran into his old friend at a train station in Kent, and the two found they had a love of the blues in common, per the BBC. They went on to form a band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys which included a friend of Jagger’s named Dick Taylor, with whom he’d been performing for some time, plus Alan Etherington and Bob Beckwith.
Jagger has eight children, the youngest born in 2016 when he was 73 years old. He shares Deveraux Octavian Basil Jagger with his current partner, American ballerina Melanie Hamrick. The two began dating in 2014.
The band officially formed in 1962 and played in clubs and pubs throughout London before touring the UK. The band’s initial style was derived from Chicago blues, a genre that would greatly inspire their famous rock ‘n’ roll sound. They covered several songs from Chicago blues artists including Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and Bo Diddley. And despite Mick Jagger and Keith Richards eventually becoming one of the world’s greatest songwriting duos, the band’s first two UK No. 1 singles were actually covers.
Michael Fish, a designer associated with fashion’s “Peacock Revolution,” designed a dress specifically meant to be worn by men that would become an iconic turning point in Jagger’s fashion evolution. The singer wore the puffy-sleeved tunic with a choker necklace during a performance in Hyde Park to pay tribute to the band’s founding member and guitarist Brian Jones who died July 3, 1969.
The two joined their first band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, which performed their first gig in 1961 at London’s Marquee Club, “whose blues purists reacted with frosty silence, the report said.
From an early age, Jagger’s spirit and ambition were evident. His mother, Eva Jagger, recalls how he was an adventurous boy, but later developed an interest in money, which set him apart from his peers. Little did she know that this drive and determination would fuel Jagger’s journey to become one of the greatest rock stars the world has ever seen.
When two of the world’s most famous rock stars teamed up in 1985, it was a surprise that it wasn’t an original song. The pair delivered an unforgettable cover of Martha and the Vandellas’ 1964 hit, “Dancing in the Street,” in benefit of Live Aid to help raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia. Their effervescent cover honors the upbeat nature of the original while adding their effortless sense of cool. The song was a Top 10 hit in the U.S. and hit No. 1 on their native UK Singles chart.