Rise to Fame
Two kids reconnected at a Dartford train station in 1961. Jagger was carrying Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records on his way to the London School of Economics. He was halfway through an economics degree when music won. The Rolling Stones didn't try to compete with the Beatles; they went the other direction, sullen and sexually threatening where the Fab Four were polished. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in 1965 completed the picture. Keith Richards' guitar riff, Jagger's sneer, and a run of albums from Beggars Banquet to Exile on Main Street made them the working definition of what rock was supposed to feel like.
In the Spotlight
At 82, he's still the main event. Hackney Diamonds won the 2025 Grammy for Best Rock Album, the first new Stones studio record in 18 years, and a 20-date North American tour followed. Off-stage, he told a reporter his 8 children "don't need $500 million to live well" and floated donating most of his fortune to charity. A man who declared himself an anarchist in his twenties, got knighted at 60, and now plans to give away half a billion dollars has clearly never done anything the simple way.
Side Notes
He changed his name from Mike to Mick at LSE to sound more streetwise. His family kept calling him Mike. The band's lips-and-tongue logo was designed in 1969 by a Royal College of Art student for £50, directly inspired by Jagger's mouth. He moved to France in the 1970s as a tax exile and bought a chateau in the Loire Valley. The 1960s anarchist who got arrested for drug possession in 1967 now describes himself as a conservative and has expressed admiration for Margaret Thatcher. Keith Richards, who publicly mocked Jagger's 2002 knighthood, was not consulted.