Once upon a time there were five nice public school boys from London and the South East. They were polite, smartly dressed and respectful. However they wanted to become a famous blues and rock band so that meant some wholesale changes would have to take place. One of them was to ditch the suits and ties (and the good manners) and start to explore their dark sides a bit more. Suffice to say the Rolling Stones have gone down in infamy as being bad boys and hell raisers even now as they approach their 80th decade. However, they have calmed somewhat since their early days.
The group’s lead singer Mick Jagger has become something of a living legend. He has stayed at the band’s forefront since the beginning and seen it’s many dramas and highs for the last 60 years. To be able to still perform and speak about those days is an incredible achievement. He has forged great partnerships with Keith Richards (who he was at Primary school with), the bands lead guitarist, and the sadly missed drummer Charlie Watts who were the core of the band. Jagger is also something of a counter culture hero, blazing a trail of much publicised romantic encounters and living the alternative lifestyle.
It could have all been very different for Michael Philip Jagger. He left school with several O levels and some A levels which gained him entry into the prestigious London School of Economics. The young Jagger was keen to become an accountant and even had political aspirations. He moved into a Chelsea flat with his school friend Keith and Brian Jones, a guitarist from Cheltenham. Jones and Richards were determined to start a blues band and were making great strides. Jagger had always enjoyed singing and offered to fill in for them. However he was determined that he was also going to maintain his studies at the Economics school.
Yet by 1963 he decided to give all his time to Richards and Jones and give being a rock star his full commitment. It must have been a tough choice but it certainly paid off as the band he was joining became The Rolling Stones, one of the UK’s most successful bands ever created. In fact his personal value is thought to be $360 million. As they performed they became the antithesis of the lovable Beatles. They were the rough types, the bad boys, even though the songs they sang were pretty tame R & B numbers, the attitude they showed was very different. Trouble with the law, which was subsequently dropped, gave them a greater edge.
They ditched the suits and started to wear Jeans. This was a sure sign of the rebel in the press and public eyes. As they moved into the 1970’s Jagger changed his look again to suit a rawer sound. He would have certainly thought about getting some Tommy Hilfiger Menswear like the range from www.ejmenswear.com/men/tommy-hilfiger.
