Mick Jagger took out an injunction stopping his first serious girlfriend, former model Chrissie Shrimpton, from publishing a trove of his old love letters, she has revealed.
Chrissie Shrimpton, 67, sister of Sixties fashion icon Jean, said she was so “disgusted” when she heard of the legal action, she sent most of them back.
But in what the Rolling Stone may read as a veiled threat, Chrissie Shrimpton let slip she still owns some of the missives Mick Jagger, 69, wrote as an up-and-coming musician.
Chrissie Shrimpton said: “Many years ago it came to the notice of a journalist that I had hundreds of love letters from Mick Jagger. She tried to persuade me to publish them, which I did not want to do, as it happens.
“Mick Jagger got wind of this and to my amazement I heard on the Radio 4 news that I was involved in a court case regarding this issue.
“Mick Jagger had put up an injunction preventing their publication on the grounds that while I owned the paper they were written on, he owned the words. I was not even informed of this by his legal party.”
She added: “I was so disgusted I sent most of the letters back to him. However, a few have turned up over the years; my fifth grandchild opened an old book at my house recently and one fell out.”
The revelation came in a letter Chrissie Shrimpton wrote to a national newspaper, in response to the news that another of Sir Mick Jagger’s former girlfriends plans to auction a series of his handwritten love letters next month.
American-born singer Marsha Hunt, 66, who inspired the Rolling Stones’ 1971 hit Brown Sugar, will sell ten letters he wrote her from Australia, while he was dating pop star Marianne Faithfull.
Chrissie Shrimpton added: “I wonder if he will stop Marsha from publishing her letters to him.”
It is not the only time Mick Jagger has sought the help of lawyers to suppress his old love letters. In 1992, his solicitors warned the Mail on Sunday not to publish notes he wrote to schoolgirl Cleo Sylvestre while he was dating Chrissie Shrimpton.
Now married with two daughters, Chrissie Shrimpton dated Mick Jagger from 1963 to 1966. They met when he was a 19-year-old student at the London School of Economics and she was a secretary.
In a recent interview, Chrissie Shrimpton said her friends thought the musician was too ugly to be her boyfriend. She said: “I used to hear them whispering, <<Poor Chrissie, her boyfriend’s so ugly>>.
“Mick would come and meet me for lunch. One day, as we walked through the market, a stall-holder threw a cabbage at his head and shouted <<You ugly f*****>>.”
But once Mick Jagger found a legion of adoring fans he began to cheat on Chrissie Shrimpton, before leaving her for Marianne Faithfull in 1966. Shortly before they split, Chrissie Shrimpton tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills.
She said later: “I remember thinking <<He doesn’t want me, and I can’t live without him>>. I really wanted to die.”
