{"id":295755,"date":"2025-11-19T22:46:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T22:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295755\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T22:46:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T22:46:10","slug":"sir-mick-jagger-makes-surprise-visit-to-old-school-in-dartford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/295755\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Mick Jagger makes surprise visit to old school in Dartford"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Phil Harrison,in Dartford and <\/p>\n<p>Craig Buchan,South East<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762859290_651_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/7b285920-c576-11f0-92f5-0fd46a9dc2cf.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"eager\" alt=\"Pete Bresser Sir Mick Jagger wearing a dark shirt and leather jacket. Four older children wearing school uniform and lanyards are stood either side of him. All are smiling at the camera.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>Pete Bresser<\/p>\n<p>The Rolling Stones frontman has visited The Mick Jagger Centre at his former school in Kent<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Sir Mick Jagger has advised the next generation of musicians to &#8220;work really hard and not give up&#8221; during a surprise visit to his former school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The Rolling Stones frontman visited The Mick Jagger Centre at Dartford Grammar School in Kent on Wednesday to mark the 25th anniversary of the facility.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The 82-year-old thanked music teachers at the performing arts centre who &#8220;inspired children and young people in their musical careers&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Sir Mick told the BBC that young people aiming for a career in music needed &#8220;a lot of luck&#8221; and to &#8220;work really hard at it and not give up&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">He said that &#8220;music wasn&#8217;t much of a career&#8221; when he was growing up, but added: &#8220;That all changed very, very quickly in the early 60s and I got on that bandwagon.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">He opened The Mick Jagger Centre, home to the Dartford Music School and Dartford Symphony Orchestra, in 2000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The centre launched a programme of events in October to mark its 25th anniversary.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762859290_651_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/898939d0-c576-11f0-a1ee-0335dba5d7dd.jpg.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Phil Harrison\/BBC A brick wall adorned with silver letters that read The Mick Jagger Centre.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>Phil Harrison\/BBC<\/p>\n<p>The Mick Jagger Centre opened at Dartford Grammar School in 2000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Sir Mick said that visiting his former school &#8220;brings back a lot of memories and it&#8217;s nice to see the kids seem happy&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">According to The Mick Jagger Centre, the singer funds its Red Rooster project offering music tuition, including in local primary schools.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;If you can express yourself through song, drama, art, dance \u2013 all these things are important,&#8221; Sir Mick added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">&#8220;My involvement&#8217;s been honestly pretty minimal in a real way, but I do feel connected to it, and I think all the people involved with it have done a really wonderful job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/1762859290_651_grey-placeholder.png\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 gUePlo hide-when-no-script\" aria-label=\"image unavailable\"\/><img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/82dfc040-c576-11f0-92f5-0fd46a9dc2cf.png.webp.webp\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Pete Bresser Sir Mick Jagger wearing a dark shirt and leather jacket, holding a burgundy bobble hat with a yellow bobble and white stripes at the bottom. Text on the hat reads Dartford Grammar. Framed sports memorabilia is on the wall behind him and there is a china tea set laid out on a table with white and burgundy tablecloths.\" class=\"sc-5340b511-0 hLdNfA\"\/>Pete Bresser<\/p>\n<p>Sir Mick attended Dartford Grammar School as a teenager<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The school&#8217;s headmaster, Julian Metcalf, said the return visit from Sir Mick was &#8220;very special and the icing on the cake&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">Sir Mick first met The Rolling Stones bandmate Keith Richards on a platform at Dartford station, forming a friendship that would lead to the band&#8217;s formation in 1962.<\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-9a00e533-0 eZyhnA\">The town has several streets named after The Rolling Stones songs, including Little Red Walk, Angie Mews and Ruby Tuesday Drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phil Harrison,in Dartford and Craig Buchan,South East Pete Bresser The Rolling Stones frontman has visited The Mick Jagger&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295756,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,63,134,136],"class_list":{"0":"post-295755","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295755\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295756"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}