Mick Jagger Learned How To Dance From This Musical Icon—or So She Said

Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger’s flamboyant and rowdy stage persona is one of the defining attributes of the legendary rock band, and according to one late musical legend, Mick Jagger learned how to dance in her dressing room while she and the Stones toured together in the 1960s.

Jagger later discredited the claim, although he always had great respect for the artist. Nevertheless, inspiration can come from the unlikeliest of places, and it’s easy to see the connection between the two rock stars.

Mick Jagger Supposedly Learned How To Dance In A Dressing Room

After starting their careers in St. Louis, Missouri, and London, respectively, Tina Turner and the Rolling Stones’ paths finally crossed in 1966 when Ike & Tina Turner earned an opening slot for the Rolling Stones’ U.K. tour. The R&B duo continued to perform with the Stones throughout the late 1960s, and after Ike & Tina Turner split, Tina opened for the Stones as a solo act.

In a previous interview, Turner recalled meeting Mick Jagger for the first time. “I didn’t really know Mick because…I didn’t really notice people a lot when I was working. But there was this guy that always stood in the wing, and then I found out that it was Mick. He wasn’t dancing on stage. Occasionally, I’d go out and watch them, and he’d just sort of do the tambourine on stage, you know?”

“He always said to us, ‘I like to watch girls dance,’” Turner continued. “I guess, maybe, not guys, he just liked to watch girls dance about on the stage. We were in the dressing rooms together, really having a ball, just kidding around. So, Mick says to me, ‘Teach me how to do the popcorn.’ That’s when I said to him, ‘So, that’s what you were doing in the wings all this time? Learning some of the dances that we do?”

The Rolling Stones Frontman Tells A Different Story

Tina Turner might have claimed that she was the one who taught Mick Jagger some of his most famous moves, but the Rolling Stones frontman politely disagreed in his 2009 book According to the Rolling Stones. “I didn’t consciously copy any moves from her,” he wrote. “She always said I did, but she’s a woman, and the movement involved is totally different. However, I would be out dancing all the time off stage, going to clubs, and picking up whatever moves were going on in there.”

Years later, Turner pushed back on Jagger’s claims yet again. “Mick wanted to dance,” she told the Daily Mail in 2017, “and I was a dancer. But he never gave me the credit! He said his mother taught him how to dance. But we worked with him in the dressing room, me and the girls, and we taught him how to Pony.” She added that musicians like Jagger and David Bowie were “like the brothers that I never had. They never came on to me because I think they saw me as a role model in some kind of way.”

On this, it would seem, Jagger and Turner could agree. Following the news of her passing in May 2023, Jagger posted a tribute to Turner on his Instagram, writing, “I’m so saddened by the passing of my wonderful friend Tina Turner. She was truly an enormously talented performer and singer. She was inspiring, warm, funny, and generous. She helped me so much when I was young, and I will never forget her.”

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