Hot news from almost four decades ago – some men on motorbikes thought about killing Mick Jagger once.
According to a BBC documentary, some Hell's Angels tried sailing a boat to Mick Jagger's house to kill him in 1969, but they were crap at sailing and all got thrown overboard so they just decided to go home again.
We know, we know. Deep breaths. As shocking as it when a public figure is murdered with no warning, it pales into insignificance when compared to when a man doesn't get murdered without warning. In fact, right now, just this second, we didn't get murdered either. And there was no warning. Hecklerspray: officially the Mick Jagger of the internet. In one hopelessly tenuous way.
Mick Jagger's whole entire life has just involved standing next to Keith Richards – a man who, even in the throes of old age, can fall out of a tree onto his head, flout loosely-officiated Scottish smoking rules and ingest his own dead father through his nose – and trying to look cool too.
He's failed time and time again, of course – the crap haircut, fondness for shiny blouses and mistaken belief that writing songs advocating a strong work ethic in the unemployed have seen to that. But it's turned out that Mick Jagger almost got assassinated the Hell's Angels in 1969. And that's sort of cool, isn't it? It certainly puts Mick Jagger up there with other failed assassination targets and icons of coolness like Ronald Reagan and Hitler.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. It has been revealed that in 1969 some Hell's Angels tried to kill Mick Jagger. And they would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for their meddling inability to navigate nautical storms with due attention to safely. The Associated Press reports:
A program to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Monday says the rock star was the target of the plot following a purported dispute with the motorcycle gang over concert security… "The Hells Angels were so angered by Jagger's treatment of them that they decided to kill him," Tom Mangold, the presenter of the program, was quoted as telling Britain's Sunday Telegraph newspaper. Mangold said the men tried to reach Jagger by sea. "The boat was hit by a storm and all of the men were thrown overboard," he was quoted as saying. They all survived but made no other attempt on his life, Mangold said.
'Jagger's treatment of them' is obviously a reference to the 1969 Altamont Free Concert, where the Rolling Stones' Hell's Angel security were accused of stabbing 18-year-old Meredith Hunter to death. Although they denied the murder, Mick Jagger publicly stated that didn't want any more Hell's Angel security guards at their concerts. So they reportedly tried to kill him as well.
Nobody knows if Mick Jagger had any idea of this supposed assassination attempt or not, but this news will almost certainly start people thinking about the what ifs. Imagine if Mick Jagger had been successfully murdered in 1969, and what the world would have lost as a result.
If Mick Jagger had died in 1970 there'd have been no Dirty Work, no Freejack, no Dancing In The Streets. And Jerry Hall would probably be a lot less famous than she is now, as well. Phew, right?
Read more:
mst3kster says
“…no Dirty Work, no Freejack, no Dancing In The Streets…”
No strutting around on stage like a constipated chicken trying to lay an egg.