Those were the glory days of the 1970s.
Rock and roll marriages in the south of France with the biggest stars on the planet behaving badly.
Mick Jagger didn’t let the side down when he married 26 year old Bianca Perez-Mora Macias in St Tropez on this day in 1971.
It was ‘the wildest wedding ever seen in the jet-set Mecca’, according to the P&J.
There were fights, curses and tears before 27 year old Jagger and his Nicaraguan bride were married by the Mayor, Marius Astezan, in the Town Hall.
The civil ceremony took place more than an hour late after Jagger had threatened not to turn up because of the press packing the Town Hall wedding chamber.
After a tense wait, during which one Jagger aide dashed a reporter’s microphone to the ground, Jagger and his bride arrived.
The singer wore a pale green suit, floral shirt, tie and multi-coloured sneakers over bare feet.
Bianca was in an all-white outfit of maxi skirt, Yves St Laurent jacket with ‘deeply-plunging’ neckline and a wide-brimmed hat fringed with roses.
The former model wept and looked helplessly at Jagger when she saw the hordes of paparazzi behind the mayor’s desk.
Soon afterward the crowd in the chamber gasped when Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards burst into the room shouting a four-letter expletive and saying there had been a fight outside.
Meanwhile Jagger appealed to the cameramen to take their pictures and leave —which they reluctantly did although officials had to use ‘strong-arm’ tactics to persuade some to go.
Finally the mayor, who had been fuming in an adjoining room during the wild scenes, stalked into the chamber and began the ceremony, which took a bare 10 minutes.
A religious service came later, and the Jaggers went on to honeymoon in Venice.
Bianca was four months pregnant with Jade, born in October that year.
The couple, who had met at the after-party for one of the band’s Paris shows just nine months earlier, informed guests of their wedding just a day before.
Jagger chartered a plane to bring his friends over.
The 75-person guest list included his parents, Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Peter Frampton, Julie Christie, Roger Vadim and Brigitte Bardot.
McCartney and Starr were seated far apart as they were embroiled in a legal battle at the time.
Jagger’s parents looked lost and out of place, with his dad reported to have said: ““I hope my other son doesn’t become a superstar.”
Music journalist David Hepworth wrote: “The Jagger wedding was the shabbiest free-for-all in the history of both rock and marriage and skin-crawlingly embarrassing for all the key participants.”
The marriage would end seven years later.
Bianca as we now know, would go on to become a force in her own right as a social and human rights activist.
Among her many achievements, she founded the Bianca Jagger Human Rights Foundation.
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