“Anarchy is the only slight glimmer of hope”: The real reason Queen Elizabeth II refused to knight Mick Jagger
In some ways, knighting Mick Jagger was like issuing a no-claims bonus to Evel Knievel. It should have been an aberration of what both parties stood for. But things had changed.
By the time 2003 had rolled around, Jagger had endured the familiar drift towards conservatism. This primed him for the prim and proper reward of royalty despite a prime period rallying against them. He had once openly called Queen Elizabeth II “chief witch”, and proclaimed that “anarchy is the only slight glimmer of hope”.
But, by the time of the new millennium, those days were behind him. He might have famously quipped in 2016, “First you shock them, then they put you in a museum,” in an apparent acknowledgement of how the status quo often subsumes and diffuses rebellion. But in truth, by the time the knighthood arrived, Jagger had long since shaken hands with the establishment he once brandished a fist to.
Nevertheless, despite his sanitised status, like anything Jagger does, the lead singer of The Rolling Stones would find some serious detractors when he agreed to meet with the royal crown. In fact, Sir Michael Philip Jagger had two main issues when receiving his honour: the first was Keith Richards, and the second was Queen Elizabeth II herself.
Stories of Jagger’s well-publicised anarchy and disorder were an obvious elephant in the room. But plenty of rumours swirled that a rebellious past was far from the only reason the late Queen Elizabeth deliberately avoided Jagger’s knighting ceremony. Alas, even before he made it to the place, plenty of people from both sides of the argument were questioning the knighthood.
One man who didn’t take too kindly to the ordeal was none other than bandmate and longtime songwriting partner, Keith Richards. “I thought it was ludicrous to take one of those gongs from the establishment when they did their very best to throw us in jail and kill us at one time,” Keith told Uncut in reference to the numerous drugs busts the band were subjected to.
It wasn’t just a grudge though, Richards didn’t think the two parties should intertwine. “It’s not what the Stones is about, is it? I don’t want to step on stage with someone wearing a fucking coronet and sporting the old ermine.” For Richards, saying ‘Yes ma’am’ was an affront to the very foundations of the Stones.
Jagger, on the other hand, though felt Richards was just sour about the announcement, saying, “It’s like children being given an ice cream – one gets one and they all want one.” Many people at the time believed that Jagger was very lucky to be holding a proverbial cone in the first place, including Queen Elizabeth herself.
The Queen was rumoured to be utterly disappointed with the selection of Jagger for a knighthood. Propelled by Tony Blair and his insistence on ringing his idea of ‘Cool Britannia’ entirely dry, Jagger’s selection met strong opposition, with Queen Elizabeth II reportedly replying to the initial selection with two words: “Not suitable”.
Not only was Jagger a foremost advocate for the underbelly of society, he had also openly spoken out against the monarchy in his youth. In interviews with cults no less, he spoke radically against existing power structures.
“Of course, in any society, the only way one can be safe within it, is by obeying the rules,” he told The Process Church. “And since the society is creating such high things, it has to have a lot of rules, and a lot of people together, and therefore they have to think alike; otherwise they lose their security.”
Even four decades on, these forgotten remarks were enough to put the Queen on high alert. While officially the Queen was due for surgery at the time of the event, rumours swirled that she deliberately missed out on the engagement to avoid Jagger.
That revelation came in the 2012 unauthorised biography Mick: the Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger. In the book, the salacious Christopher Andersen quotes a royal aide saying, “There was absolutely no way in the world that [Queen Elizabeth] was going to take part in that.” But beyond the obvious aversion to pinning a medal on old adversary, there was one more rumoured reason for the Queen’s dismissal of Jagger.
According to reports, Jagger had enjoyed a relationship with Queen Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret in the past. The Queen’s sister had garnered a reputation for a party lifestyle, and by all accounts, Jagger was at times a part of her group of friends, dining with one another and generally enjoying one another’s company.
While the famous photoshopped picture of the pair in the bath together is, of course, a fake, there were plenty of occasions where they were pictured at cocktail events and dinner parties together. It has always led to rumours that Margaret and Mick were having an affair. As one royal courtier, present at the infamous parties, told the Daily Mail, “She found him sexy and exciting. If you saw them laughing together, dancing, the way she’d put her hand on his knee and giggle at his stories like a schoolgirl, you’d have thought there was something going on.”
Of course, these reports are completely uncorroborated, but they speak to two opposing schools of thought that differ from the typical Jagger narrative. The first came from Jagger’s publicist, Keith Altham, claiming that contrary to some of the snarling rocker’s public remarks, “He aspired to be an aristo from the very beginning”.
The second being that there was perhaps a more personal reason to the Queen quipping “not suitable” in response to Blair suggesting randy old Mick be made a Sir.
But amid the whole salacious debacle, perhaps the most meaningful remarks were Keef’s cutting sally that Jagger had sullied the cornerstone of the Stones by becoming a Sir. But even he accepted that there was a sorry air of inevitability about this. Iconoclasts often quickly become icons in the modern capitalist system.
In fact, in the very interview with a cult where Jagger laid out the manner in which the regime retains control, he prognosticated that even as a rebel, he was susceptible to falling in line with them. “The system itself manages to keep on its feet by absorbing all the reforms. There are people standing in Parliament today who were bigger thinkers and rebels than I will ever be in our lives,” he presciently said.
Continuing, “That’s why reforms are not for long. It starts by you. I feel that if you start with yourself, you can have the effect. And you can’t start on me. It’s got to be me. I mean, it’s got to come from the individual.” In 2003, Jagger was no longer an individual; he was a knight of the realm, and both the realm and the knight’s friends were ambivalent about it. Jagger, perhaps, was just pleased he could claim the utmost recognition while still putting noses out of joint on both sides.
