Jagger and Richards honoured in hometown for Rolling Stones achievements

  • Reporter James Dunham has been to see the statues

Sir Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have been honoured in their hometown with a pair of statues to celebrate their musical achievements with The Rolling Stones.

The bronze sculptures, dubbed The Glimmer Twins, capture frontman Sir Mick singing into a microphone mid-movement while Richards slashes on his guitar.

Created by artist Amy Goodman after she was commissioned by Dartford Borough Council, the statues were unveiled at One Bell Corner in Dartford on Wednesday.

Ms Goodman said that sculpting the works had been “one of the hugest honours” of her career and called the experience “very overwhelming”.

Sculptor Amy Goodman was commissioned to create the statues Credit: Yui Mok/PA

She said the process of creating the work, which involved making models, casting into bronze and help from the Talos Art Foundry team, took about a year.

Ms Goodman added: “I didn’t quite know how to handle it but it’s wonderful and it’s a great job.

“Commissions like this make my job the best job in the world.”

The council founded the project to celebrate the musicians who were both born in the town in Kent.

Dartford Council leader Jeremy Kite said: “I’ve had overwhelmingly good responses to it today, I think there’s a surprise that actually they’re so kind of animated and dynamic, the statues, and I think that’s a really nice thing.

“We could have had the old fashioned standing upright statue, but this is Mick Jagger and Keith Richards we’re talking about, and they don’t stand still, so our statues don’t.”

The statues were financed through a public art subscription fund, to which developers contributed, said Mr Kite.

Keith Richards’ daughter Angela, right, and granddaughter Ava, 12, at the unveiling Credit: Yui Mok/PA

“The two main aims are just to celebrate two really good Dartfordians that we’re very proud of, but also to inspire young people,” he said.

“When these two started out, music was a very different scene, and they changed things, and so what we’re trying to do is to inspire people to say ‘I come from Dartford, I can go and change the world, just like these two’.”

Sir Mick and Richards first met as classmates in Dartford and went on to found The Rolling Stones in the 1960s.

The group became one of the most popular and enduring bands of the rock era.

Among their hits are Paint It Black, Gimme Shelter, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (But I Like It), Honky Tonk Women, Start Me Up, Sympathy For The Devil and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

Goodman has sculpted many notable public commissions in her career, including a bust of Florence Nightingale which stands in Aldershot, the Romsey War Horse statue in Romsey Memorial Park, both in Hampshire, and the sculpture of the late British Formula One driver Sir Stirling Moss at Silverstone, Northamptonshire.

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