LONDON, June 15 (UPI) -- Mick Jagger, the rubber-lipped, long-time "bad boy of rock," became "Sir Mick" when Queen Elizabeth II made him a knight of the realm in her official birthday honors list released Saturday.
The unstoppable Rolling Stone pronounced himself "delighted at the news" as he took time out from rehearsing for another tour abroad to acknowledge the honor.
Later this year, Jagger will don formal attire for probably one of the few times in his life to journey to Buckingham Palace for a ceremony in which Queen Elizabeth is expected to dub him as a knight for his "services to popular music."
Knighthoods have become fashionable among the old swingers set, with Elton John, Cliff Richard and former Beatle Paul McCartney gaining the queen's permission to add "Sir" to their names. The 58-year-old Jagger had complained about missing out on royal recognition.
Jagger led the Rolling Stones to fame and fortune in direct competition with McCartney and the rest of the Beatles in the 1960s. The Beatles have long since disbanded, and two are dead, but the Stones keep rolling on.
As the queen's star-studded honors list was announced Saturday, "Old Rubber Lips" -- billed by one as "the hedonistic granddaddy of British rock" - and the rest of the Rolling Stones were preparing for a lucrative series of gigs across the United States later this year.
In the meantime, as one rock music critic put it, Jagger "has perfected the art of growing old disgracefully," including a string of marriages and a series of flings with models. Another said his knighthood "can only be for his years of reeling and rocking."
Neither has he any known record of charitable work or public services -- for some reason, Jagger was missing among the rock celebrities on stage at the recent Golden Jubilee pop concert at Buckingham Palace in honor of Queen Elizabeth's 50 years on the British throne.
Nor is the aging Stone everyone's role model. In the 1960s, Jagger and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richard were arrested on charges of drug possession. Meanwhile, he rolled through a series of marriages, to Nicaraguan socialite Bianca Perez de Macia, then later to Texas-born model Jerry Hall, before, during and after a string of affairs.
But the Stones were generally considered the only group to rival the Beatles in popularity during the 1960s, and Jagger's own style won the admiration of a young rock singer named Tony Blair, today's British prime minister.
A biography of Blair describes the future prime minister as coming on stage with a band called the Ugly Rumors, "giving it a bit of serious Mick Jagger, a bit of finger-wagging and punching the air."
Blair's administration was instrumental in recommending many of the recipients of the titles and medals awarded in the queen's honors list Saturday.
