On the Night of May 2, 1977, Bianca Jagger Rode Into Her 27th Birthday at Studio 54 on a Horse

Studio 54 was a staple of the 1970s and ’80s party scene. It was a serious celebrity playground, with regulars like Andy Warhol, Michael Jackson, Truman Capote, Elizabeth Taylor, and Farrah Fawcett. Bianca Jagger can comfortably take some of the credit for making Studio 54 a household name, considering she threw her 27th birthday party at the club a week after it opened. This gave Studio 54 enormous publicity, and helped it become one of the most iconic party spots of all time.

Obviously Jagger’s husband, Mick Jagger, celebrated the night with her. Some other big names that made an appearance were Liza Minelli, Halston, and Calvin Klein. Model and actress, Jerry Hall, also showed up, but this was about 20 years before she became Mick Jagger’s second wife.

The club was filled with white balloons and one wall featured a light bulb display spelling out Bianca. To her surprise, a white horse greeted Jagger at the club. Wearing her red, flowy dress, Jagger mounted the horse and a naked Hugo led her to the dance floor. The photos of that moment landed Jagger on the front page of newspapers around the world.

“I would like to set the record straight. Mick Jagger and I walked into Studio 54,” Jagger wrote in a letter to the Financial Times, following an interview in 2015.

“Steve Rubell (Studio 54’s co-founder) had apparently seen a picture in a magazine of me riding a white horse in Nicaragua and he thought it would be a clever idea to bring a horse to the club as a birthday surprise for me. It was a beautiful white horse that reminded me of mine, and I made the foolish decision to get on it for a few minutes. The photographed image went around the world, giving rise to the fable – that I arrived at Studio 54 on a white horse.”

Jagger’s renewed insistence that she did not arrive horseback to the popular Seventies establishment is as a result of her work as an environmentalist and animal-rights campaigner.

“No doubt you will agree with me that it is one thing to, on the spur of the moment, get on a horse in a nightclub, but it is quite another to ride in on one,” she continued. “I find the insinuation that I would ride a horse into a nightclub offensive. Hopefully this letter will finally put this Studio 54 fable – out to pasture.”