"Allen Ginsberg tried teaching me how to give a blow job. He said it was like prayer." - Marianne Faithfull

• After Marsha’s altercation with Mick (when he claimed he never loved her and threatened to take her nearly two week-old daughter away) things started to get put into perspective for her. And though she relished in being a mother to her sweet, yet lively baby, who she mostly spoke to in Black vernacular/AAVE and nicknamed “Pookie”, the new role really whipped her into shape.
• Marsha claimed, “I was able then to support myself and my daughter,” but she explained to Mick, who she was still in touch with, “I don’t need your help now, but if I ever do I expect to be able to come to you.”
• Although he made some early efforts at involvement with the baby (who, according to one associate, “looked remarkably like Mick”), he ultimately turned all his attention to his new girlfriend, Bianca Pérez-Mora Macías.
• While Marsha was very attentive to her child and thrived off being there for her every need, Mick was gearing up for another tour and was still occasionally seeing other women, including his then personal chef, Janice Kenner, and occasional girlfriend, soul singer and Ikette, Claudia Lennear, while courting his girlfriend, Bianca.
• Pretty much all references to Marsha and the baby were quickly airbrushed out of his life. Another one of his ‘hoes,’ Californian model and former flame of Eric Clapton, Catherine James, also claimed: “When I moved into Mick’s house, I knew about Marsha, but his relationship with her was already over. It didn’t seem a big deal to him. He just mentioned that she was a girl he had met who had got pregnant. He said he wasn’t in love with her, but she was very talented.” She also stated, “I felt he was not encumbered by anything, not by Marsha or the baby. He was young, and I didn’t get the impression he was thinking seriously about becoming a father and being part of this child’s life.”

• Though she couldn’t go on the road yet, Marsha went right back to work after Karis was born. She lived frugally, hoping to get more work in the coming months to ease her escalating money troubles. She quickly realized just how expensive it was to have a newborn, so in order to pay her rent, a nanny, and for diapers and formula, she took the first job that came her way. After a sudden fire and ceiling collapse shut down the run of “Hair”, she took a role in another musical called “Catch My Soul,” a rock version of Othello. Originally singer Marianne Faithfull was to play a character in the show called “Desdemona” which was the same name of the Marc Bolan song Marsha had released in 1969, and ironically, the name of the character Marsha played was “Bianca.”
• At this time, Marsha also had to be more cautious with journalists. They always wanted to turn her profiles into a risque discourse on “love without marriage” and brand her baby a “love child”. She refused to mention Mick in her interviews and avoided all questions about her baby’s father.
• Meanwhile, Mick and the rest of the Stones moved to France in April 1971 because the income tax in England was so high at the time (it was a 93% supertax imposed by the government on the country’s top earners). In fact, they all owed about £100,000 each, so to pay it back, they had to leave. Marsha had known since 1969 that they had financial problems and tax exile was planned.
• Before Mick left, he asked Marsha to have her nanny bring their baby, whom he hadn’t seen since their argument in November 1970. She always made it clear through their mutual contacts that he could see his child whenever he wished or have her visit him with her nanny.

• Bianca became pregnant a little over a month after Karis was born, and Marsha hoped (naively) that his second baby would remind him of his first.
• Several weeks after Karis visited him, Mick and Bianca, who was already 4 months pregnant at the time, got married in a shotgun wedding that took place on May 12, 1971 in St. Tropez, France.
• The wedding was a complete circus (from beginning to end). None of the Rolling Stones attended, except for Keith Richards, Mick even invited his ex-girlfriend and the first woman he ever impregnated, soul singer P.P. Arnold (a detail Bianca wasn’t privy to). Right before the wedding, Bianca also discovered that according to French law, she and Mick had to make clear “what property they held in common.” It was only then that she learned how little this was and threatened to call it off, but eventually relented.
• The entire event was a skin-crawling spectacle with Mick and Bianca sweating and pushing their way through crowds of pressmen, photographers, people on holiday, and rubberneckers.
• Marsha’s nanny was watching the news report of his wedding and started to cry. Marsha thought, “Girl, save those tears for something more important!”…but of course, she kept quiet!
• NONE of the Rolling Stones (or their wives/girlfriends), the brand’s close camp, and the many people who worked for Mick actually liked Bianca and often described her as cold, aloof, pompous, and extremely difficult to get along with. No one really knew anything about her: what she did for a living, her actual age, or even why she refused to speak Spanish even though she was Nicaraguan. She also despised the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle (so, why’d you marry the motherfucker? 🤔), which put A LOT of people off. She was a bit of a snob and even referred to the guys in the band as “The Nazi Party”!

• Anyway, when “Catch My Soul” ended its run, Marsha embarrassingly took a job appearing in a German soft-drink commercial, which she never considered doing a commercial before, but she needed to make extra cash to pay her bills.
• Marsha even had to let go of her nanny and her cleaner who came by a few days a week to help her. She lived from day-to-day and tried not to think of the future.

• Months later, Mick out of the blue, invited Marsha and Karis to see him at his new house, which was a huge palatial mansion with many spare rooms in the south of France. But at the very last minute, she was told by his longtime driver, Alan Dunn, that she wouldn’t actually be staying at his house, but instead with Stones guitarist Mick Taylor and his fiancé because she wasn’t “allowed” and because Bianca “didn’t want some woman her husband used to sleep with in her house.” (….what a fucking BITCH!!!) A biographer once claimed that Bianca who was “Catholic” had always felt disadvantaged by Marsha because she had Mick first and mothered his eldest child, so this was one of many examples of her taking the “upper hand.”
• Marsha also discovered that her friend, Mick Taylor, had fallen into a serious drug addiction after joining the Rolling Stones which she felt guilty about since she was the one who suggested him as the replacement guitarist for the band 2 years earlier. 
• When Marsha finally arrived at Mick Jagger’s house, she saw him and a very pregnant Bianca who almost looked like she was Black at first glance. The both of them showed her no hospitality and had no manners. In fact they were EXTREMELY rude at the dinner table: cuddling, nuzzling, murmuring, and only talking to each other in French while completely ignoring Marsha and Karis as though they didn’t exist and were there to see someone else. It felt like he was deliberately trying to humiliate her. Now, whether or not he staged the whole charade to spite and embarrass Marsha and show off his new pregnant wife, or to prove to the jealous Bianca that he was indifferent to Marsha, it was nonetheless, a shocking, disgusting, and unnecessary display.
• Before Marsha left she begged him to “loan” her £200 to get by to which he grudgingly wrote out a check. (Like, why does she even have to ask you for these things?! 🤔) He couldn’t even look her in the eye during her entire visit as Marsha claimed, “I guess he couldn’t.”

• Later on, Marsha was still having a really hard time getting work, and her expenses were really racking up. She lost a part in a film with Sidney Poitier because she couldn’t afford a baby-sitter and had to bring Karis along to her audition.
• She also regularly saw Mick in newspapers living the high life and wondered if he’d lost his integrity or would lose her mind thinking if he had any in the first place. When she was unsure, she’d re-read his old letters and they reassured her that he was capable of humanity and that their friendship wasn’t a figment of her imagination.
• When baby Karis spent her first birthday on the set of “Dracula AD 1972,” Marsha had the studio chef bake a big pink-and-white cake for her and Mick even had a handsome rocking horse delivered to her.
• For a while, she and Mick were still somewhat ‘friends’…but the whole situation was still awkward.

• Even after the birth of Mick’s second daughter, Jade Sheena Jezebel Jagger, in October 1971 (they named her Jade because Mick claimed “she is very precious”…”and quite, quite perfect!” 🙄), Marsha naively thought it would get some sense knocked into him. He actually once invited her to bring Karis to be photographed with Jade at his other house at Cheyne Walk, but he only seemed to take interest in Jade.
• Strangely, Mick doted on Jade as much as he ignored Karis. The fool even bragged, “I’m a terrific dad. Jade is a fantastic kid, a lovely baby, very sweet and good tempered…I’ve always been a good father, and the kid makes it easy to be that way.”
• Jade’s nanny at the time, Sally Arnold, even said that Mick enjoyed fatherhood and was eager to take lessons in baby care claiming, “He’d come in and watch me bathing her and changing her nappies (diapers) and he’d ask me to show him how to do it and he’d do it. He was a real hands-on father.”
• Bianca on the other hand, was not the maternal type and would act quite awkwardly toward Jade, at times lifting her like a bowling ball and even once dropped her down the stairs. She also often complained of the “tremendous strain” of being a mom: “Nobody knows what a strain it is to keep a house, look after Jade, and be dressed properly all the time.”
• According to friends, it seemed Bianca spent less time with Jade than Mick did and often left her with a nanny because she liked to socialize at parties and events, or go to the hottest discotheque in town.
• Jade Jagger even once said in an interview many years later that her mother refused to breastfeed her and because of her parents’ high-profile, globe-trotting careers, they both treated her more like a “mascot” that they had to fit into their lifestyles, rather than a daughter.

• In 1972, Marsha eventually put a new band together called 22, but was put on a small retainer with her new label, and as the leader, most of her money went to her band, equipment, management, travel, and hotel accommodations for Karis and a traveling nanny. Going back on the road meant she had to ask Mick to chip in on the £600 needed for a nanny to go on tour with her and the baby. Mick was also getting ready to go on an American tour with the Stones to support their latest album, Exile on Main St., that was expected to gross over $4 million.

• As always, Mick NEVER offered her money, and she only called him as a last resort because the idea of asking him for anything made her sick. It was also very expensive for her to even track him down by phone wherever he was around the world.
• Later on, while at a cafe during her tour in Germany with her band, 19-month old Karis accidentally scolded herself with extremely hot tea and had to be rushed to the hospital, but it took her hours to find an emergency doctor who would accept her because she was Black and who spoke English to treat the burns. When Mick finally phoned and asked if he could help, she asked if he could split the hospital bill with her which was £75. He promised to send it but it never arrived. Karis was finally admitted to an army base hospital and had to stay for 10 days, to which Marsha missed a few gigs. This resulted in her having to skip out on paying the bill. She felt absolutely horrible because they had been so nice to her. It seemed ungrateful. Yet, she didn’t hear from Mick again until after his tour ended.
• When she finally met up with Mick, she asked why he hadn’t forked up the cash to help their daughter, he “playfully” said that she “probably would have bought shoes with the money.”
• BRUUUH…Marsha was like:

• This incensed her, because first of all…HOW FUCKING DARE YOU?! Like, you can’t be serious. Second of all, she thought, “When’d you ever know me to be frivolous with money”?

• She was fed up with Mick’s bullshit and trying to chase him down for an occasional handout. So, she FINALLY consulted with her band’s lawyer and asked him how she could go about setting up an emergency fund for her daughter, but he explained that the only legal right the child had to contributions to her welfare was through a paternity suit, since Karis wasn’t conceived through marriage (as English law was very unkind to single mothers).
• Marsha explained that Mick acknowledged that he was Karis’ father. The issue was parental neglect. Her lawyer reconfirmed that there was no other legal alternative to her predicament but a paternity suit. She wanted to vomit. She asked him to follow the necessary procedure and to go about it in a way that would keep it confidential and out of the newspapers. Marsha also knew that a paternity suit had negative connotations and it didn’t really approach the problem. She just wanted her kid to have what she needed.
• To serve a writ did not mean that it had to be filed in court, if Mick was prepared to act reasonably. But to postpone service, meant that they would have to wait for Mick to come to England again. There was no way of knowing when that would be as he was based abroad. After 2 years, she had to stop lying to herself and pretending that he would do the right thing. 
• Later on, Marsha met Mick on the long steps of the Albert Memorial, near the same spot she told him she was pregnant years earlier. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she believed that in spite of his horrible behavior, somewhere there was still a friend.
• They walked arm-in-arm through the park (really to calm him). The issue of the baby and his responsibility to her was serious. She needed things and his pretense that he didn’t have to help had to be confronted.
• If his jet-set life made the situation seem remote, it was understandable. So, Marsha suggested that he put aside a trust fund for the Karis’ future education and any emergencies. It could be administered by trustees and she could avoid asking him personally for help when it was needed. A £25,000 trust fund seemed adequate and he’d be free of any further financial responsibility. 
• After their walk, they sat in a nearby pub and Mick said he would put £20,000 in a trust for his daughter. She was relieved that they were able to find a solution without a lawsuit or unnecessary animosity.
• As they parted, she assured him that he was more than welcome to see his child whenever he wanted. But by the time their solicitors spoke later that evening, Mick (like the cheap bastard he is) had reduced the trust investment once again to £17,000.
• When Karis turned 2 years old, Marsha invited her half-sister Jade, who she thought was precious, to her birthday party. The fact that Mick and Bianca let her come with her nanny suggested that things were alright between them.
• During this time, a very simple and straightforward trust agreement was drawn up by her solicitor. But after many months of letters and asking for signatures and funds, it still hadn’t been signed and no money was available. It NEVER happened!

• Marsha could only think Mick and his solicitor wanted the lawsuit, which she finally had to proceed with. On July 16, 1973, the affiliation order was filed. The hearing was set, but when it hit the newspapers it stank. Unlike their secret affair, the case was very public and unpleasant. People were shocked that Mick Jagger had possibly had a child with a Black woman.
• Keep in mind, up until that time no one outside of their close circle really knew about Mick and Marsha’s relationship, so the story was reported as though Marsha had suddenly appeared with a 2 year old child out of nowhere to accuse Mick, who was a huge rockstar, of paternity.
• Mick was reportedly furious that Marsha went public with the allegations and was quoted saying, “I’m not upset for myself. It’s just that my mother didn’t know, and she gets upset about this sort of publicity. Why did Marsha have to be so bloody silly? It wasn’t as though I was going to leave her and Karis to starve!” 
• In the whirlwind of publicity that followed, Mick denied paternity and, in an effort to stall legal proceedings, insisted on a blood test—thus implying that Marsha was promiscuous. Marsha, meanwhile, was portrayed as a home-wrecking gold-digger. Mick, stung by what he viewed as Marsha’s “betrayal,” sarcastically suggested that she had gone public merely to hype her own flagging career.
• Marsha thought it was interesting that in contrast to “groupies” whose connections to rockstars gave them an elevated status, her relationship with Mick made her a pariah.
• Paparazzi and photographers staked out in front of her home, so she had to hide out at a house her band stayed at until the headlines died.
• Afterwards, Marsha wanted to be less visible and more incorporated in her band’s image, so she decided to cut off all of her famous hair. British Vogue even wanted her to cover the event. The magazine’s photoshoot also included her daughter Karis, who the public had never seen before.

• There was no doubt that the suit affected how people perceived her. And  when the media asked Mick to make another statement, he snidely asked if Marsha hadn’t had a new record released. He wanted to imply that that paternity suit was a publicity ploy, which couldn’t be further from the truth.
• Mick’s wife Bianca was also asked about the suit and was quoted saying that she “didn’t give a damn.” Marsha of course said NOTHING!
• In 1973, Marsha got a job as a host of a new late-night radio talk program for Capital Radio in London where she interviewed some big names; everyone from Barry White, Dionne Warwick, Bill Withers, Sarah Vaughan, and Stevie Wonder (who she chatted with for 3 ½ hours). The show was a success and expanded her public profile, and among the chaos of her personal life, she developed a reputation as a smart woman who conducted compelling interviews with guests.
• For Marsha, hosting a radio show was extremely hard work. She had to do extensive research, stay abreast on current issues, learn about projects interviewees were releasing  - all with no formal training or experience. She was also running on 3 hours of sleep everyday, yet still found time to spend with her daughter who liked going to Regents Park in London to feed the geese.

• Marianne Faithfull was also one of the guests she interviewed during her Sunday-night program, while she was appearing in a play called “The Collector” in the West End. Marsha thought she’d had an interesting career, which at that time encompassed music, theater, and film. And when she went to her theater dressing room, her new boyfriend, Oliver Musker, wanted to go to the cinema while they taped the interview. He didn’t have any money, so Marsha lent him some. The interview was successful: neither of them mentioned Mick before, during, or after their chat, but he did have the audacity to write to Marsha and say that he liked it.

• In addition to her talk show, Marsha also had to DJ a Black music spot on Saturday nights, which included R&B, soul, as well as reggae. One strange interview was with Bob Marley, who wasn’t a household name yet. She couldn’t understand a word he was saying because of his heavy Jamaican accent and he pretty much sexually assaulted her while on the job as he kept feeling on her legs, even when she kindly asked him to stop and he wouldn’t. 🤢 He even left his little green, weed-smelling Rasta cap for her when he departed.
• But, during yet another interview with the writer and novelist Gore Vidal, Marsha found out that Bianca, Mick’s wife, was going around talking shit about her to him and other random people. This was after the paternity suit.

• Marsha was still working at Capital when the lawsuit came up for a second time. Mick was not at the 6 November 1973 hearing, when the case drew sensational headlines.
• In spite of her work, Marsha lived a very normal life and even the mundanities of it were affected by this kind of press. People all around would be cold toward her and give her nasty looks. Even mothers at Karis’ nursery school who had been friendly before avoided her because Mick was everybody’s hero. I mean, he was the frontman of the Rolling Stones for Christ sake! So in turn, her phone stopped ringing, which didn’t surprise her at all. 
• Though, by Mick denying paternity, he again insinuated that Marsha was sleeping with other men when Karis was conceived (which of course she wasn’t). Therefore, it was Marsha who stood accused, and Karis was the one being punished, because whatever the father’s means, a child born to unmarried parents only had a right to only £5 a week in maintenance from him.
• Her solicitor advised her to accept the out-of-court settlement. The best offer that Mick would make was £500 pounds a year (£9 pounds a week) and a £10,000 trust fund that Karis would get after she finished school. BUT…this was offered by Mick and his lawyers ONLY if Marsha agreed to sign an actual fucking affidavit stating that Mick wasn’t the father. (THE AUDACITY!!!)
• Extremely desperate, Marsha caved in to his demands and agreed to sign. And even though court proceedings started in 1972, Marsha didn’t see a damn dime until 1975.

• Instead of feeling angry and becoming hard-shelled, Marsha was completely humiliated. She felt like there was no justice in the world. After Mick’s paternity denial, Marsha didn’t allow any photographs of her daughter to be taken and shunned away from the press completely.
• When her contract with Capital came up for renewal, she decided to step out of local radio. She was pretty much a token there during that new era of radio because she was Black and a woman, and she also found she didn’t like delving into people’s personal lives and corralling them into self exposure. It felt hypocritical of her.
• After that, Marsha’s agent booked her some singing gigs in Portugal and other parts of Europe. Then in 1976, she went back to performing in theater in England. 
• To make ends meet and to assure that her daughter had everything she needed, Marsha stayed in a tiny rundown unit catered to up-and-coming actors that had no central heating, no phone and was unbearably cold, especially in the winters. She called her daughter Karis every single day and during her time off, she rushed home by train to see her.
• In 1977, after cutting a new disco record with a German label, Marsha moved back to Los Angeles to find a distribution deal and swapped her London flat with a journalist who was living in Hollywood at the time (as she saw no end to the problems that had been created in England through the paternity suit). Marsha claimed she went from being “the girl from Hair” to “the girl who sued Mick Jagger”.
• It was difficult for her to sustain a recording career due to her lack of desired Black female vocal style. No one really understood her music because like how dare a Black woman get up on a stage and not sound like Aretha Franklin?! She later quit the music business, having promised herself that this would be her last go, stating, “Music was only acceptable as a career if it could provide us with an income.” She redirected her creative energies to acting and writing and tried to find more work, but the market was quite different for her in America as the industry only saw her as one-dimensional (i.e. “Black and female”) - a reason she mostly stuck to theater. It was still the Blaxploitation era in film, and most roles for Black auditioning actresses were far, few, and somewhat degrading. I mean, how many fucking times can you play a stereotypical part like a slave, a hooker, a nurse, or a gun-slinging, jive-talking stone fox before it chips away at your integrity and diminishes your artistry?!
• That summer, Marsha was informed by Karis’ school teacher that her daughter’s test scores were through the roof and that she was far more advanced than other children in her class and age group. So, they suggested that she should be put in a school for the gifted. 
• Karis needed special attention, which her old school or nannies couldn’t provide, so Marsha had her enrolled at an expensive special school that was 12 miles away from where they stayed (she would often see Tina Turner walking  her dogs along the way) so she wouldn’t be deprived.
• While in L.A., Marsha also stayed with an old friend, musician John Mayall, who adored her daughter and was kind enough to give her room and board while she readjusted to being back in the U.S.
• Around this time, Bianca was known as a socialite, (even though she once told journalist Geraldo Rivera that she was an “actress” - shit, I ain’t never seen her in anything!) and was always seen at the latest movie premiere or nightclubs like Studio 54 in NYC petting doves and shit, and would constantly spend Mick’s money on diamonds, furs, and trips. She never showed concern for her step-daughter Karis and NEVER once asked about her or her welfare. 

• On the other hand, Mick was known to cheat on Bianca and engaged in many affairs with various women, including famous names like rock & roll groupie Bebe Buell, singer Carly Simon, singer Ava Cherry, supermodel Pat Cleveland, and the daughter of actor/comedian Tommy Chong, Rae Dawn Chong who, unbeknownst to Mick, was actually 15 years old at the time.

• Marsha still occasionally kept in touch with Mick through her agent/mutual friend who set up their contact. 
• After Mick separated from Bianca, he started living with his new girlfriend who he previously had an affair with, Texan model Jerry Hall.
• Jerry was actually a very delightful and cheerful woman. Unlike Bianca who was serious most of the time, Jerry was always smiling and was very southern and fun to be around. She was also the one who prompted Mick to spend more time with his daughter, Karis.
• That’s why in 1978, even though she was informed by a mutual friend that Mick was still heavily using cocaine and heroin, Marsha still agreed to arrange for them to spend a day together while he was in L.A. At that time, he hadn’t seen his daughter Karis in FIVE YEARS. 

• Weirdly enough, in that same year, Mick also wrote the title song for the Rolling Stones album called Some Girls which many believe alludes to Marsha with the lyrics: 

Black girls just wanna get fucked all night  I just don’t have that much jam

AND…

Some girls so corrupt Some girls give me children I only made love to her once

• The song’s lyrics were so degrading that many Black radio stations refused to play it, along with any other single from the album, due to its sexist and racist nature. Jesse Jackson, who was running for president at the time, even called for a boycott!
• It’s funny, but Marsha always gave Karis a good impression of her father and wanted her to be proud of him even though he disrespected her constantly. When Karis got to the age when she became curious about who her father was (she even once asked if he was dead) Marsha told her the truth. If a Rolling Stones song played on the radio, Marsha would say, “That’s your daddy you know!” Mick had made great contributions to rock ‘n’ roll music and she always explained that his absence had something to do with his feelings for her and not Karis.
• After Mick and Marsha got in touch during his visit to L.A., he realized that she was in over her head sending Karis to a school for gifted children, but as always didn’t offer to help. 
• Financially, Marsha was committed way over her head, and after house sitting for another friend, she had to face her situation. Two promising deals she was looking forward to fell through, and even though the disco record that she cut for the German label was popular on the gay discotech scene, her earnings didn’t cover enough for her to survive. So, she conceded that she was down to collecting social security.
• She found asking for a handout, when all she wanted was a job, was absolutely demoralizing and she felt indignant at what her life had become. She was no longer a singer or an actress, she was Black-female-unemployed, another file number, another statistic.
• She filled out endless forms before she came to a snag. She then realized she couldn’t get any government assistance or food stamps without supplying the name of her child’s father so that someone could contact him about support payments. Now, imagine a West L.A. social security employee trying to get Mick Jagger on the phone. The government had to try with a mother’s cooperation to get a father to provide maintenance through a paternity suit if necessary. This wasn’t an irrational requirement. But she knew that there was no other way that she could put Mick’s name on a social security aid form without fanfare.
• This time around, a second case would affect their daughter Karis, who was older and couldn’t be shielded. She wanted her to fully understand what was going on and what might happen, especially at school, if she took Mick to court again. So, she talked it over with her and let Karis decide.
• Marsha also had to consider how another lawsuit would affect her family, including her brother who was a respected music journalist at the Los Angeles Times newspaper, and how they might be dragged across the mud along with her (especially since she’s a woman). No matter how much she wanted to avoid another paternity suit, it was her duty as a mother to acquire whatever security she could for her daughter so that if something happened to her, if she dropped dead, Karis would be provided for.
• There was no question of her destitution (she was still only receiving £9 pounds a week from Mick), but before the caseworker approved her application, she sent Marsha to the local DA’s office for help in trying to get more child support from Mick. In the preliminary paternity suit hearings that were scheduled, Marsha sought $2,190 per month in child support payments.
• Marsha claimed, “It’s not like a normal child with an absent father…Mick’s there every time you turn on the radio or see a magazine cover. If Karis has got to suffer that, I don’t think she should also have to suffer being suddenly poverty-stricken,” She also said. “It’s been difficult to keep her from becoming bitter when he seems to give his energy and money to other women but not to his daughter. We’re talking about a minute amount of money to someone who earns a lot.”
• After talking with the welfare worker and the DA, she got legal advice from two lawyers before she approached a third. She went to celebrity lawyer, Marvin Mitchelson, the paladin of paramours, who promptly sued Mick to establish his paternity, to get Karis child support, and to restrain his promoters from paying him his share of gate proceeds from two July shows he had in Anaheim with the Rolling Stones.
• The case carried on for months and she was advised to settle out of court once again. She told her lawyer that she couldn’t accept another settlement because Mick’s contributions towards their child’s well-being wasn’t the only issue any longer. She wanted his paternity legally confirmed however long it took. Karis had a right to know that Mick was indeed her father.
• I mean, Mick was pasted on people’s walls, sang out from the radio, and peered at her from magazine covers. People would talk about him while Karis sat in the room as if he had nothing to do with her.  It was crazy!
• When Marsha discovered that her lawyer had also taken on Bianca Jagger’s divorce, she wondered if he planned to drop her case, but he said he was able to represent them both. She felt uncomfortable about it but wasn’t in a position to quibble.
• A few times Marsha was asked to sell her story to newspapers and magazines for quite a lot of money, but she wasn’t tempted at all. She just wanted Karis to think well of her father and wanted to feel that the settlement served him as much as it served her. She even wrote to him to let him know that what happened was past and he was still welcome to see Karis. She wanted to put the issue behind her so that she could carry on with her life.
• After the case went to the Superior Court judge, the judge was like: 

• Mick eventually caved in, but not before bitterly attacking Marsha and making crude comments to the press that once again called Marsha’s integrity into question. When asked about her in 1978, he told a reporter for SOUL magazine, “She’s a hustler,” and that she was, “just out for publicity. Everytime she comes to a low point and she can’t be bothered to get any work, she drags me around. She never even gives me a call to say ‘Please Mick, I want some money.’ I have no idea if that child is mine or not.”
• In another interview, he stated, “She’s an idiot; she won’t take any fuckin’ work…She’s a lazy bitch.” And, when asked how many children he had during the interview, Mick shrugged and said, “I don’t know. Not many.”
• Marsha didn’t say anything. How could she say anything?! Mick Jagger is RICH, WHITE, and FAMOUS. Who was going to come to her defense?!

• Little did “Mick Cannon” know that after driving their daughter to school every morning, Marsha would scurry off to do various housekeeping jobs to keep financially afloat. Luckily, she had a lot of famous acquaintances/friends in the business and would often clean their homes from top to bottom. Marsha said the work had dignity, and it kept her from borrowing money from other people. 
• She sort of felt like she was doing him a favor. That while he was behaving badly, she was doing two things for him: taking immaculate care of the daughter that they planned and had TOGETHER and leaving the door open, so that when he was ready to come back, he could. 
• Marsha also thought he was kind of a fool, and once claimed that “When he gets older, and the fame dies, and he looks around and all he has is his children….he’ll regret this.”

• At the end of January 1979, paternity was cleared with a blood test and maintenance was ordered which was stated, may not be disclosed. It was enough to keep Karis in school at the time.    

• There was no lump sum and it wasn’t retroactive, as most people imagined. Every cent went to Karis. But Marsha knew that if she didn’t get work soon, she’d be in financial trouble again.
• In spite of the lawsuit Marsha was also able to keep Karis’ picture out of the newspaper and protect her right to a normal childhood.
• Later that year, Marsha started dating actor Robert De Niro who accosted her at a hotel when she was picking up a friend, and was estranged from his wife. She didn’t know who he was at first, but she remembered his face from a film called the “Godfather II.”
• While her friends from Fleetwood Mac went on tour, their producer asked Marsha and Karis to pet sit his baby boa constrictor who she ended up keeping. Around this same time, a British newspaper called the Daily Mail ran a third-page article about Marsha which read as if she had been interviewed. It headlined an accusation about Mick as a quote from her even though she never spoke to them and it was a total fabrication. She went to a solicitor to force a retraction, but it cost a lot of time and money to sue a newspaper for libel.  She got absolutely nowhere.
• Additionally, in 1979, Bianca Jagger did an interview for The Telegraph saying that “Mick is avoiding taxes in every country in the world and he has 13 lawyers helping him to do it. Why should I be denied my freedom and a decent allowance for the sake of his tax situation? Then I read in the papers that Marsha Hunt had been awarded the same sum from Mick in her paternity suit (that’s a damn LIE) that I, his legal wife 🙄, am given to bring up our daughter and run the house. I felt fed up, furious. It was at that point that Mitchelson called me from Los Angeles and offered to help me. He likes women. He has a sense of justice. He made me see that if Mick wants a fight, I must use the same weapons.”
• FYI, Bianca ended up receiving over £1 million in her divorce settlement with Mick, while Marsha got around $6,000 a year. 

• Marsha hotfooted all around the world, from LA to Australia and back to London and the U.S again, continuing to write songs and gigging with a band she put together called Martha and the Vendettas (which was a play on her favorite group Martha and the Vandellas), even though they made little to no money at all.
• Taking care of Karis was her #1 priority, as she was a very bright and congenial child. She had loads of friends, loved playing outside and scraping her knees, ate sloppy Joes, went to summer camp, and lived an extremely normal life growing up for the most part in America. Most people wouldn’t even know that she was the firstborn child of the biggest rockstar in the world.

• In 1982, Marsha started work on a film called, “Britannia Hospital,” which was a British black comedy starring Malcolm McDowell (a.k.a Alex DeLarge from “A Clockwork Orange”). This is when she also met singer Sting, lead singer of the English rock band, The Police, who was working on a film. They became really close friends and she even stayed at his home for a while. Marsha was also the person who arranged backup singers for him when he went on tour with The Police a year later.
• “Britannia Hospital” was well received, so much so that it was entered into the 1982 Cannes Film Festival, in which Marsha was invited. It was there she realized that mostly all people wanted to know about her was her relationship with Mick. 
• She didn’t want to talk about him at all. It felt like she was losing herself and it scared her. After years of working so hard, all the failures and all that happened with Mick, Marsha started to gain a lot of weight and eventually had a mental breakdown and had to seek professional help.

• Mick had just gotten off the European leg of his “Tattoo You” tour with The Rolling Stones and was kinda beefin’ with the rest of the guys in the band. It would be 7 years until they toured again. So he had “extra” time on his hands at that point.  

• On Karis’ 12th birthday, Sting threw a little party for her and she got loads of presents from Marsha’s friends from The Police and The Who. And when she got home Mick surprised her with 3 large boxes wrapped in gleaming china-red paper that were waiting for her. It looked like Santa had made a November drop. He also phoned her from NYC to tell her “Happy Birthday” too. Marsha was happy and hoped that Mick would come through whatever had held him back all those years. Her intention was to smile and make him feel welcome. 
• That was it! No big apology. No “I’m sorry for how I treated you both.” He just eased back into their lives when the apology should’ve been as loud as the motherfucking disrespect!!!! ☕️☕️☕️

• By 1983, Mick and Marsha were on decent terms and he even wanted her to be interviewed for an autobiography he was writing, which she agreed to do, but refused to show letters he had written to her in 1969.
• A year after that, he and Jerry Hall were expecting their first child together, daughter Elizabeth Jagger, and that’s when the media finally started to see Mick out with his first child, Karis. Jerry would actually invite her to family events, holidays, and trips instead of treating her like a bald-headed step child. I guess after Mick had completely neglected her for 12 YEARS and having a new child on the way…it just wouldn’t look right! 
• Mick also made a statutory declaration to the Registrar-General in London, where a new birth certificate was entered which read ‘KARIS HUNT JAGGER’. By then, Mick (though not having custody) bore sole financial responsibility for Karis.

• Mick and Marsha ended up enrolling Karis in a private secondary boarding school in the UK, Bedales, which he paid for, so she could be close to her father. 
• She also grew closer to Jade who was a bit wild and had a problem with authority. Jade was even once thrown out of her school for sneaking off on the middle of the night with a boy.
• Karis on the other hand, was the total opposite. She was extremely shy, soft spoken (if she talked at all), and kind of ‘preppy.’ She learned French just like her dad a played two instruments, piano and the harp, which impressed Mick.

• Once in a while, Mick would take Karis and Marsha out. They even once saw Beverly Hills Cop starring Eddie Murphy together. They sat in the front row and Mick had his arm on her thigh the whole time. Afterward, they walked to his car and someone snapped a photo of Mick and Marsha holding hands and she was like “Aw, hell. Here we go!” They later went to the very fancy and expensive Tour d’Argent restaurant for dinner, where people constantly came up to him asking for his autograph, and it was weird because it almost felt like they were…a “family”! But it was also in that moment she realized why she never married him. She couldn’t put up with the fanfare and playing second fiddle to anybody. 
• Later on, in 1985, an editor at a noted publishing house in England approached Marsha and asked if she would write a book about her life. Her initial response was, “Absolutely NOT!” She also said that, “Enough people had trashed my life in newspapers that I don’t want to participate in writing about my life.” She just thought they wanted to know about Mick Jagger: how hung he was or who she knew that he knew that maybe she could get some dirt on him. So, she said no she wouldn’t do it. But they were really interested in hearing what she had to say and what was individual about her life including the 60s rock scene. So she went away to write the book which was released in 1986.

• Years later, when biographer Phillip Norman released a book about Mick, he said this of his relationship with Marsha Hunt in an interview: He’s a massive contradiction. He [Mick] can behave very well, and he can behave not very well…but that’s the prerogative of rockstars who don’t grow up. You can’t predict them. One minute they seem quite pleasant, the next minute they’re being completely horrible.  They feel they have no control of their behavior.