by There’s a word for what Mick Jagger had: Nymphomania.
All those years ago, in 2010, Maroon 5 may have been more right than they’d imagined, on their sticky pop chorus wth Christina Aguilera that insisted drunk kissing and licentious seduction all lead to the “moves like Jagger”. How might one “take me by the tongue”, anyway?
A fact like this could quickly be dismissed as hearsay. Who’s to really say whether The Rolling Stones frontman had a sex addiction? The intensity of his libido might’ve been increased by the fame, the popularity, the sycophantic obsession that comes hand-in-hand with heading a hugely popular band throughout a time where sexual liberation was newly celebrated and, heck, the contraceptive pill became a thing.
Well, one person attempted to duly offer an answer, and that’s Christopher Andersen, who covered Jagger’s history for more than four decades, culminating officially in his book, Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger. Though he didn’t interview the man himself, the writer spoke to his family, friends, wives, co-workers, and mistresses to learn of his alleged over 4,000 lovers. “I’m no paragon of virtue,” Jagger once remarked. He can say that again.
Andersen uncovered a shocking story about the wild times of the ‘Heaven’ singer. He shared with CBS News, “[Jagger’s second wife] Jerry Hall proclaimed after putting up with his infidelity for 23 years that he was a sex addict, and she asked him to get help. Keith Richards asked him to get help, and they were thrilled when he sought help from a sex therapist until he seduced the sex therapist.”
Imagine how painfully awkward that conversation must have been for Richards. The fact that his friend intervened shows just how awful the situation at hand was, though it’s only guesswork what was said during the conversation. An entire pack of cigarettes was inhaled, most probably.
Andersen continued, “I mean, that’s the kind of guy we’re dealing with, somebody who has personal demons and compulsions, I think.” Jagger has eight children range in age from 52 to six years old. He also has five grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Hall once called him a “predator”.
You might cry—why did no one attempt to capture this at the time? Where’s the tangible record of his gluttonous debauchery? Well, they did: in 1972, a tour documentary was withdrawn from broadcast. The depiction of Jagger snorting cocaine and groupies having sex with tour members was deemed inappropriate for broadcast, for some ungodly reason.
We will never truly know what went on inside that therapist’s office, not on the silk chaise longue Jagger might have leisurely stretched out upon while bemoaning the deep-seated longing at his core. He might have made eyes at the therapist, sure, who might have decided, for one time and one time only, to go back on their resolve, who might have thought to themselves: “Oh, go on then, just this once. It’s Mick Jagger, for fuck’s sake.” Something tells me this guess isn’t so far from what the sofa saw.
