page_title: Mick Jagger
section_title: 1960s
hierarchical_section_title: Mick Jagger / The Rolling Stones / 1960s
caption_attribution_description: English: Trade ad for 1965 Rolling Stones' North American tour.
context_page_description: Sir Michael Philip Jagger is an English singer, songwriter, actor, and film producer who has gained worldwide fame as the lead singer and one of the founder members of the Rolling Stones. Jagger's career has spanned over five decades, and he has been described as "one of the most popular and influential frontmen in the history of rock & roll". His distinctive voice and energetic live performances, along with Keith Richards' guitar style, have been the trademark of the Rolling Stones throughout the band's career. Jagger gained press notoriety for his romantic involvements, and was often portrayed as a countercultural figure.
  Jagger was born and grew up in Dartford, Kent. He studied at the London School of Economics before abandoning his academic career to join the Rolling Stones. Jagger has written most of the Rolling Stones' songs together with Richards, and they continue to collaborate musically. In the late 1960s, Jagger began acting in films, to a mixed reception. He began a solo career in 1985, releasing his first album, She's the Boss, and joined the electric supergroup SuperHeavy in 2009.
context_section_description: In their earliest days, the Rolling Stones 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 Korner's gear to play. 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, in London 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 Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Ian Stewart on piano, Dick Taylor on bass and Tony Chapman on drums. However, Richards states in his memoir Life that "The drummer that night was Mick Avory−not Tony Chapman, as history has mysteriously handed it down..."
  
  By autumn 1963, Jagger had left the London School of Economics in favour of his promising musical career with the Rolling Stones. The group continued to play songs by American rhythm and blues artists such as Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, but with the strong encouragement of manager Andrew Loog Oldham, Jagger and Richards soon began to write their own songs. This core songwriting partnership took some time to develop; one of their early compositions, "As Tears Go By", was a song written for Marianne Faithfull, a young singer Loog Oldham was promoting at the time. For the Rolling Stones, the duo would write "The Last Time", the group's third No. 1 single in the UK (their first two UK No. 1 hits had been remakes of songs that had previously been recorded by other artists "It's All Over Now" by Bobby Womack and "Little Red Rooster" by Willie Dixon) based on "This May Be the Last Time", a traditional Negro spiritual song recorded by the Staple Singers in 1955. Jagger and Richards also wrote their first international hit, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". It also established the Rolling Stones' image as defiant troublemakers in contrast to the Beatles' "lovable moptop" image.
   Jagger told Stephen Schiff in a 1992 Vanity Fair profile: "I wasn't trying to be rebellious in those days; I was just being me. I wasn't trying to push the edge of anything. I'm being me and ordinary, the guy from suburbia who sings in this band, but someone older might have thought it was just the most awful racket, the most terrible thing, and where are we going if this is music?... But all those songs we sang were pretty tame, really. People didn't think they were, but I thought they were tame."
  The group released several successful albums, including Out of Our Heads, Aftermath and Between the Buttons, but in their personal lives their behaviour was brought into question. In 1967, Jagger and Richards were arrested on drug charges and were given unusually harsh sentences: Jagger was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for possession of four over-the-counter pep pills he had purchased in Italy and Richards was sentenced to one year in prison for allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property. The traditionally conservative editor of The Times, William Rees-Mogg, wrote an article critical of the sentences; and on appeal Richards' sentence was overturned and Jagger's was amended to a conditional discharge (although he ended up spending one night inside London's Brixton Prison). The Rolling Stones continued to face legal battles for the next decade.
  By the release of the Stones' album Beggars Banquet, Brian Jones was only sporadically contributing to the band. Jagger stated that Jones was "not psychologically suited to this way of life". His drug use had become a hindrance, and he was unable to obtain a US visa. Richards reported that, in a June meeting with Jagger, Richards, and Watts at Jones' house, Jones admitted that he was unable to "go on the road again," and left the band, saying  "'I've left, and if I want to I can come back'". On 3 July 1969, less than a month later, Jones drowned under mysterious circumstances in the swimming pool at his home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex.
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caption: Jagger with the Rolling Stones in 1965. Clockwise from lower left: Brian Jones, Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Bill Wyman
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