Mick Jagger’s Knighthood and Keith Richards’ Mockery: A Crack in the Stones’ Rebel Facade

When Mick Jagger was knighted in 2003 for services to music (he’d already been a Sir since 2002’s New Year Honours, but the ceremony happened that year), it was a formal nod from the British establishment to a band that had spent its first decade mocking that same establishment. Jagger accepted, reportedly telling the press he was “thrilled and humbled.” Keith Richards, predictably, was not.

Richards called the knighthood “an embarrassment” in interviews, joking that the Stones were now “a respectable rock band.” He claimed Jagger’s public schoolboy background (LSE economics degree, parliamentary ambitions) made the honor inevitable, while Richards—the working-class art student who lived on the edge—saw it as a betrayal of the band’s anti-authority spirit. The tension wasn’t new, but the knighthood crystallized the old difference between the two Glimmer Twins: one wanted to be taken seriously by the system, the other wanted to burn it down.

The public spat never fully healed. Richards would later say he “couldn’t be seen with a Sir,” and for years after, their stage banter included digs about “His Lordship.” But in typical Stones fashion, they kept touring—the animosity just became another layer of the show, a very British kind of sniping that let them play the rebels vs. the royalist.