When imperious Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner sent his staff on an assignment, he always made one thing clear — the magazine that saw itself as the bible of rock music demanded the definitive story on its biggest stars.

Even so, it seemed clear to him that his favourite photographer, Annie Leibovitz, might have gone beyond the call of duty one evening as she padded up a white sand beach in Barbados behind Mick Jagger.

They were all on holiday together on the Caribbean island over Thanksgiving in 1979 and, sitting around over cigarettes and cognacs after dinner with their host, music tycoon Ahmet Ertegun, Bianca Jagger suddenly asked where her husband had got to. Nobody knew — or indeed where the flamboyant, 6ft tall Leibovitz had gone either, as she too had mysteriously vanished. Then the Rolling Stone suddenly appeared — with sand all over the knees of his trousers — closely followed by the photographer who Wenner had assigned to cover the band.

It was fairly obvious what must have happened between the free-spirited pair, said Wenner. ‘Bianca walked out without a word and there was a general sigh of relief,’ he recalls in his new autobiography. ‘Then she returned with a large pot of water and poured it over Mick’s head….