Actors - Mick Jagger

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	Actors - Mick Jagger

Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger (born 26 July, 1943) is an English rock musician, actor, writer, songwriter, record and film producer and businessman. He is most famous for being the lead singer and co-founder (with guitarist Brian Jones) of the British rock and roll band The Rolling Stones. He is also the songwriting partner of Stones guitarist Keith Richards, and the pair have composed almost all the Rolling Stones' original material, as well as numerous songs for other artists including "As Tears Go By" (for Marianne Faithfull) and "Out Of Time" (for Chris Farlowe).

Biography

Early years

Jagger went to college at the London School of Economics for nearly two years. He did not graduate, choosing instead to drop out and pursue his musical career. As a student, he frequented a London club called the Firehouse. At the age of 19, Jagger began performing as a singer. He frequented clubs such as the Cavern Club, and admired the same type of blues musicians that Brian Jones and Keith Richards favored. In fact, Elmore James was one of the band's early favorites, as well as anything from the Chess Records collection in Chicago.

While Jagger knew Richards as a schoolmate, the songwriters reunited when Richards saw Jagger with a blues record under his arm, and asked him where he purchased it. The group, combined with Jones, Bill Wyman, Ian Stewart, and Charlie Watts formed the Rolling Stones, based on the Muddy Waters tune "Rollin' Stone." Stewart was dropped from the band for not fitting the image desired by manager Andrew Loog Oldham, but still toured with the band until his death in 1985 as a pianist. It was Oldham who insisted that Jagger call himself "Mick" rather than "Mike", a name he continued to use among friends; for example, John Lennon calls him Mike in the 1968 The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus.

Drug controversy

In 1967 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 the 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 -- whereupon the latter promptly sued the tabloid paper 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.

Leader of The Rolling Stones

It was during this period that 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 or had committed suicide).

Children and marriages

Jagger's first child, Karis Jagger (by singer Marsha Hunt), was born in 1970.

In May 1971 he married Bianca Perez Moreno de Macias, and she gave birth to their daughter, Jade Jagger later that same year. The couple divorced in 1979.

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 Beauregard and James Leroy Augustine Jagger'.

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