Mick Jagger Stories So Strange They're Hard To Believe

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For decades, it's been clear why there will never be another rock star like Mick Jagger. One of the world's most enduringly famous people, the charismatic singer for The Rolling Stones has been at the forefront of rock music for six decades — and counting. Jagger has seemingly defied the passage of time; he celebrated his 80th birthday in 2023, a year in which the Stones put out the band's best-reviewed album in years, "Hackney Diamonds," and the following year hit the road for a sold-out North American tour. During that jaunt, Jagger proved he hadn't lost a step, strutting the stage like he had 50 years earlier. In fact, a review from the Associated Press declared he and the Stones "played with the energy of a band that was on tour for the first time."

Meanwhile, Jagger's personal life has been filled with drama. Divorced twice — with his marriages to first wife Bianca and second wife Jerry Hall both ending due to his cheating (his marriage to Hall was annulled after he impregnated a 25-year-old Brazilian model). As of June 2025, Jagger is the father of eight children from five different women — the oldest born in 1970, the youngest in 2016.

Through it all, whether in music or gossip columns, Jagger has cut a wide swath through pop culture, and tales abound. To find out more, read on for some Mick Jagger stories so strange they're hard to believe.

Kevin "Dugie" Dugan spent years on the road with Van Halen, employed as a bass tech for Michael Anthony. When Van Halen shared a bill with The Rolling Stones in 1981, Dugan recalled rushing backstage to get Anthony a new bass after he'd accidentally smashed an instrument onstage. Dugan frantically pushed open a door, sending someone flying back several feet to land butt-first. When he went back to apologize, Dugan discovered the guy he'd knocked down was none other than Stones frontman Mick Jagger.

A few years later, Dugan was pushed into a limo containing Jagger. They were alone. "I understand we've met before," Jagger told Dugan, as he related in an interview with Ultimate Guitar. After Jagger asked him to tell Anthony he'd love him to play bass on his solo album, Jagger then invited Dugan to dinner with him and the album's producer, Dave Stewart. Then, Dugan recalled Jagger's demeanor darkened. "All of the sudden, his facial expression changed and he lunged at me, grabbed me by my shirt and pulls me towards him and says, 'If you ever knock me on my ass again, I'll have you killed!'"

Dugan admitted he was terrified — until Jagger began to laugh out loud, telling Dugan, "I can't keep a straight face ..." Jagger then proceeded to roll down the limo's window, revealing numerous people standing there, laughing hysterically. "We got you!" Jagger's co-conspirators told Dugan.

Mick Jagger's pursuit of the opposite sex is hardly a secret, yet the sheer number of women he's reportedly hooked up is nothing short of astonishing. When researching his 2012 book, "Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Mick Jagger," author Christopher Anderson calculated an approximate number. "By one estimate, Mick Jagger has slept with 4,000 women," Anderson revealed during an interview with "Extra."

While it's impossible to pinpoint all those women — even Jagger would likely have a tough time recounting them all — Ultimate Classic Rock put together a list of 64 women rumored to have been linked to Jagger. Among them: Paul McCartney's late wife Linda, who dated Jagger before meeting McCartney; Princess Margaret, younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II; Italian model/French first lady Carla Bruni; Estelle Bennette of iconic girl group The Ronettes; supermodel Janice Dickinson; singer Linda Ronstadt; "Splash" star Daryl Hannah (now married to another rock legend, Neil Young); Rae Dawn Chong, who revealed she just 15 when she hit the sheets with Jagger; "One Day at a Time" star Mackenzie Phillips; and, via a longstanding but entirely unproven rumor, former American first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

According to Anderson, that number may be even greater when factoring in further rumors that Jagger's relationships over the years have not been entirely heterosexual. "Mick himself said at one point, 'Everyone is basically bisexual,'" Anderson added.

Among the many women to land on the radar of Mick Jagger was Angelina Jolie, whom he met when she appeared in the music video for The Rolling Stones' "Anybody Seen My Baby?" In his gossipy book, "Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Mick Jagger," author Christopher Anderson contends that Jagger developed an obsession with Jolie, attracted to the sense of danger she carried. "She scares me a little," Jagger reportedly said of Jolie. "I like that." 

Jagger began calling Jolie incessantly, becoming increasingly desperate the more she ignored him. Eventually, she relented, and the two entered an on-again, off-again romance reportedly lasting two years, with Jolie said to have enjoyed the power she held over such a famous, powerful man. 

In 1999, she accompanied Jagger to a party thrown by record producer Richard Perry, ostensibly to watch Lennox Lewis take on Evander Holyfield in a boxing match. According to the book, however, he ditched Jolie and vanished with former Charlie's Angel star Farrah Fawcett for a solid chunk of the evening. While the book doesn't detail what it is she and the former "Charlie's Angels" star were up to after disappearing together, Jagger's reputation as a legendary lothario would indicate they probably weren't playing cards.

Another claim made in Christopher Anderson's "Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Mick Jagger" contends that Mick Jagger had an affair with David Bowie. The openly bisexual Bowie intrigued Jagger — initially due to his competitive instincts. "Mick was very conscious of doing whatever it takes to stay hot, and David was the hottest thing around at the time," said Leee Black Childers, a one-time executive with Bowie's management firm.

That led to a period in the 1970s when Jagger began wearing makeup, particularly blue eyeshadow, and adopting a more androgynous style. Meanwhile, the two men became constant companions, spotted together ringside at a high-profile boxing match and hanging together in London discos. At that time, Bowie was married, although he and his wife Angie had a highly unconventional marriage that involved sleeping with others of both sexes. In the book, she claims that she once opened the door of their home's bedroom, and was greeted with the unexpected sight of Bowie and Jagger in bed together, naked and sleeping. While she didn't catch them in the act, she connected the dots.

According to Snopes, Jagger denied her claim that he and her then-husband had been lovers as "complete rubbish," while Bowie's lawyer described her account as "an absolute fabrication." The truth may never be known, and the story may or may not be among the myths that people believe about Mick Jagger.

Back in the 1970s, journalist Geraldo Rivera became enmeshed in NYC's A-list social scene, which placed him in proximity with Mick Jagger. One night, as a hotspot closed down, Rivera invited a group of 15 or so to keep the party going at his apartment, which included Jagger and ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev. As Rivera recalled in his memoir, "Exposing Myself," he was in the kitchen mixing drinks when Nureyev approached him from behind, pressing himself against Rivera. "He was being playfully suggestive, overtly sexual, and before I had a chance to even think how to respond, Jagger approached me from the front and started doing the same thing."

At first, Rivera assumed the two were goofing around, but their behavior grew more serious and more suggestive. "Nureyev said, over my shoulder, to Jagger, 'He's a virgin, you know.' And then they laughed, and Jagger joked, 'Oh, well, we can break him in,'" Rivera wrote, recalling how Nureyev ran his fingers through his hair. "I squirmed out from between this odd sandwich and laughed the whole thing off," he continued.

Reflecting back, however, Rivera came to believe that the two weren't joking, and were legitimately attempting to seduce him. Ultimately, he wrote, nothing happened, although he admitted that he did experience a certain degree of attraction to the rock star and the ballet icon.

When Mick Jagger met Jerry Hall, she was engaged to Roxy Music's Bryan Ferry. Nevertheless, Jagger made his intentions clear, chasing her around a ping pong table demanding she kiss him until Ferry threw him out. Jagger was undeterred and continued pursuing Hall, who became increasingly intrigued. However, when Jagger admitted that he'd been smoking heroin, that proved to be a red line for Hall. "I was disgusted," she wrote in her memoir, via an excerpt published in the Daily Mail. "I told him I couldn't see him if he took drugs, saying: 'Go away and don't come back until you're straight.'"

He kicked the habit, she added, through sheer willpower. Hall eventually split with Ferry and took up with Jagger, and the two married in 1990. Hall soon recognized that Jagger was not a one-woman kind of guy. However, she felt confident she'd be able to tame him. "I had got him to quit heroin — I could get him to give up girls as well," she rationalized. That, however, proved easier said than done, and stories of his infidelity continually made their way to her. "Mick was a dangerous sexual predator and, although I loved him and he swore undying love for me, I felt unsure of him," she admitted. When Mick confessed that he'd fathered a baby with a 25-year-old model, Hall was done. "It was the final straw," she wrote. "I told him I wanted a divorce."

The Rolling Stones lifted the band's name from an old blues song, Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stone." When Jann Wenner launched a counterculture publication focusing on rock music, he named his mag Rolling Stone. In an essay Wenner wrote for the introductory issue, he explained the magazine's name came from the old saying, "A rolling stone gathers no moss," while also admitting the name was inspired by the Stones, as well as Bob Dylan's first foray into rock music, "Like a Rolling Stone."

When Mick Jagger found out, he felt the name of Wenner's new magazine to be less an homage than outright theft. According to Joe Hagan's book about Wenner, "Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine," Jagger was irked Wenner ripped off his band's moniker — without featuring the Stones on the cover of the inaugural issue. While Jagger and Wenner went on to have a long friendship, Jagger's annoyance lingered. "Why did Jann call it that, when there was a band called that?" Jagger queried, via an excerpt from the book appearing in Vulture. "You could have thought something else, to be honest. I mean, I know it arised from a song name, but that's not really the point."

Jagger's fellow Stone, Keith Richards, offered an even more pointed take on the situation. "We thought, 'What a thief!'" the guitarist reportedly said.

The next time any cocktail aficionados belly up to the bar to order a Tequila Sunrise, they have Mick Jagger to thank. While the origins of the drink can be traced back to a Tijuana resort during Prohibition (although an Arizona bar also lays claim to the drink's invention), it was the Trident Bar — a watering hole in Sausalito, California — that really got the ball rolling during the early 1970s. One-time Trident Bar bartender Bobby Lozoff claims to have invented the current version of the cocktail, basing it on a Singapore Sling but subbing tequila for gin. 

The bar was a popular spot with rock musicians, including Jagger's band. "Mick came up to the bar and asked for a margarita, I asked him if he had ever tried a Tequila Sunrise, he said no, I built him one and they started sucking them up," Lozoff recalled in an interview with National Geographic's Assignment blog. "Mick Jagger liked it, so they took it on tour with them in their famous 1972 tour that basically broke America," spirits historian Dave Wondrich told Tales of the Cocktail. 

Keith Richards vouched for the cocktail's popularity with the band in his 2010 autobiography, "Life," writing (via an excerpt in Rolling Stone) that they'd nicknamed that tour the "Cocaine and Tequila Sunrise Tour." The boozy concoction earned a special place in pop culture the following year, courtesy of a different rock band when the Eagles' released the 1973 single "Tequila Sunrise."

Over the years, Mick Jagger has made no secret of his ambitions to be both a rock star and a movie star. That never quite manifested, although Jagger has acted in film sporadically over the years, including the 1970 movies "Ned Kelly" and "Performance," the 1992 sci-fi flick "Freejack," and the 2019 drama "The Burnt Orange Heresy," among others. 

While Jagger has appeared in numerous films, there are longstanding and hugely intriguing rumors about the roles that he nearly played but, for whatever reasons, did not. One long-held bit of Hollywood lore contends that Jagger was keen on starring in a film adaptation of the novel "A Clockwork Orange." Malcolm MacDowell, who shot to stardom via the role Jagger sought, was friends with Jagger and confirmed it. "Before [director Stanley] Kubrick got hold of the property, Mick Jagger and the Stones wanted to do it!" MacDowell told Variety. "Well, I'd like to see that!"

Another iconic role that was rumored to have gotten away from Jagger was Dr. Frank-n-Furter from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," famously embodied by actor Tim Curry. Interviewed by Rolling Stone, the film's producer, Lou Adler, could neither confirm nor deny, although he did feel it was unlikely Jagger would have actually gone through with it. "Oh, I don't know," Adler said. "I don't know if he ever seriously would have played it."

Mick Jagger's relentless pursuit of women is hardly a secret — after all, infidelity was stated as the reason for divorce by both his ex-wives. However, Jagger appeared to have few boundaries when it came to the women he chose to pursue — which extended to the wives of his bandmates.

That's the claim made by Jo Wood, ex-wife of Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood. Appearing on the "Loving and Living" podcast, she confirmed that Jagger tried to put the moves on her, while he was still with Jerry Hall, and while she was married to the Stones guitarist. "[Mick Jagger] certainly did try it on and I did get really mad at him. I said, 'In your wildest dreams, Mick Jagger,'" she said. In fact, Wood insisted that she had no interest in him, and his attempts to woo her went nowhere.

"[Mick] loves women, he does," Wood explained. "Doesn't make him a bad person," she added, "I just didn't fancy him at all."

Mick Jagger's relationship with Keith Richards has been rocky, but Jagger has also ticked off other members of the band. In Keith Richards' memoir, "Life," the guitarist writes about the time, while on tour, that Jagger called drummer Charlie Watts in his room at 5 a.m. When Watts answered, Jagger asked, "Where's my drummer."

About 20 minutes later, there was a knock on the door. "There was Charlie Watts, Savile Row suit, perfectly dressed, tie, shaved, the whole f***ing bit," Richards wrote. "I opened the door and he didn't even look at me, he walked straight past me, got hold of Mick and said, "Never call me your drummer again." Then he hauled him up by the lapels of my jacket and gave him a right hook." This was no ordinary blow, noted Richards, but a "lethal" drummer's punch that "carries a lot of balance and timing." Richards recalled Jagger falling back, collapsing atop a tray loaded with smoked salmon.

Watts punching Jagger in the face is a great story — and also one that Jagger claims is total fiction. "Didn't happen," Jagger told Mojo. "Keith invented that story." While Jagger admitted that he did make the call and that Watts was indeed "annoyed," he contended there were so many people in the room at the time that no blows ever landed. "But if that's what Keith wants to believe ..." he added.