Bianca Jagger: 'I did not ride the horse into Studio 54. I just got on it'

Bianca Jagger has sought to set the record straight on one of clubbing’s most enduring legends: the night of 2 May 1977, when she was said to have ridden into the New York nightclub Studio 54 astride a white horse. There was a white horse, she accepts in a letter to the Financial Times – she could hardly deny it, given how widely the photograph of the event has circulated – but, crucially, she didn’t actually ride it into the nightclub.

In her letter she says she and her then husband Mick Jagger walked into the club. But Studio 54 owner Steve Rubell had seen a picture of her riding a white horse previously and decided, as a birthday surprise, to arrange for the presence of a white horse.

“It was a beautiful white horse that reminded me of mine,” she writes, “and I made the foolish decision to get on it for a few minutes … No doubt you will agree with me that it is one thing to, on the spur of the moment, to get on a horse in a nightclub, but it is quite another to ride in on one. As an environmentalist and an animal rights defender I find the insinuation that I would ride a horse into a nightclub offensive … I hope that you can understand the difference between ‘coming in’ on a horse and getting on one.”

Guardian Music has scoured the website of People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals searching to see if it takes a different policy line on the issue of riding horses into nightclubs to simply sitting astride them in nightclubs. Peta appears to be silent in the issue.

However, it does say: “Animals are capable of suffering and have interests in leading their own lives; therefore, they are not ours to use – for food, clothing, experimentation, entertainment or any other reason.” Though it is not stipulated, it is possible “entertainment” also covers sitting on horses in nightclubs.