I see Stonesrule's point, by that criteria, we could all write a 'bio' of anyone.
I'm hoping this one, however, strays from the tabloidy aspect of Jagger's persona...that's been done to death.
As for the of-cited 'sources' - we shall see if this book offers anything new or insightful rather than snarky or gossipy.
If, for instance, Marianne is the only one of Jagger's women to be interviewed (and that's the impression I get), and the author has developed an intimate repartee with this source, then isn't this relationship going to be a more prominent subject? I don't need another view of Jagger filtered through Marianne's hazy, contradictory recollections.....been-there-done-that etc.
If the author is going to give us something fresh and objective, I want to see that.

I'll wait and see.
Proudmary, you're going to have to give me you're own educated impression of the book when you read it. I'll wait for your heads-up.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2011-09-09 01:08 by stupidguy2.

double post



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-09-09 01:30 by stupidguy2.

"least sentimental..." Did Spitz take a poll of fellow rock stars?

I love to read and there are numerous writers who know music that I admire -- Jon Pareles, Stanley Booth, Nik Cohn, the late Lester Bangs etc. etc.

I have a great local library and wouldn't you know they'd just gotten a copy of the Spitz book when I was there yesterday afternoon to return books. I read half of it last night and will get round to the rest over the weekend. He'a lively writer which is always appealing but I haven't come across anything particularly new or unknown to the voracious Stones fans at IORR.

One area I would like to have seen both Spitz and Keith explore is at least a brief discussion or facts and figures on the Rolling Stones songs. I was told several times in the past that it's a fifty-fifty arrangement on advances and royalties between Mick and Keith...which would certainly make Mick a very generous co-writer in terms of Keith's erractic output.

You're real fast,stonesrule! So,is it worth buying?
meanwile for those who haven't read it yet

Exclusive: Read an Excerpt from 'Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue'The story behind the Rolling Stones' 'we piss anywhere' philosophy

By ROLLING STONE
SEPTEMBER 9, 2011 11:05 AM ET

In this exclusive excerpt from "Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue," author Marc Spitz tells the story behind Mick Jagger's "we piss anywhere" philosophy that helped establish the Rolling Stones' rebel-hero image as a contrast to the Beatles. The new biography is available now.

It can be argued that Mick Jagger's greatest philosophical statement of that crucial year of 1965 is not "I can't get no satisfaction," but rather "We piss anywhere, man," uttered on a cold night in front of a petrol station that refused them use of a toilet. This is in no way meant to minimize the seismic "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," which is now so overplayed that it's underplayed; have a listen today and you will be reminded of what a truly thrilling single it is. People write this about "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," of course. It routinely tops lists of Greatest Ever This or Best That of All Time to the point that we feel we perhaps don't need to listen to it anymore, but it's appearance in a Summer 2010 episode of Mad Men (taking us back to the summer of '65 and perfectly articulating chain-smoking Don Draper's own frustration with useless information) was like ice water to a booze-flushed cheek. "Oh yeah! That song." And still "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," alpha song that it is, work of art that it is, is still just a song. "We piss anywhere" is an ideology.

The whole incident lasted only about two minutes, the length of a great vintage pop song, but in its own way, it was more powerful, and far more political, than many of the Stones hits that came afterward. "We piss anywhere" was "released" on March 18, 1965, and took only a day or two to climb the "charts" and stir up the kind of attention that would help the Stones' crossover, like Dylan's, from pop concern to political football. They were now "spokesmen," for the "do what I like set," as Altham would write in N.M.E. the following year.

In the John Fordian sense, the legend has already been printed and the actual details are less important, but here's how it probably went down. The Stones, a new UK Number One to their credit after "Little Red Rooster," their sultry Willie Dixon – penned sex bomb, topped the charts shortly before the winter holidays, were returning from another sold-out and riotous gig in a movie theater in Romford. It was just after midnight and bitter cold. All five were piled into their black Daimler touring car. Feeling nature's call, the group stopped at a Francis Petrol station in Stratford outside of London. At first, they were polite. Bill Wyman asked the attendant, a clean- cut gent named Charles Keeley, if he could please be directed to the bathroom as the others got out and stretched. Keeley, like much of his generation, knew who the Stones were but had yet to come around to them. He'd been working all night in the cold, and at this hour, he didn't care for the looks of them. He ordered the group to get back in and keep driving. When they complained, Mick Jagger took command of the situation, nudged Keeley back, and announced, "We'll piss anywhere, man."

In his testimony, Keeley described being surrounded in the dark by "shaggy haired monsters" who all began chanting in unison: "We'll piss anywhere! We'll piss anywhere!" "One danced to the phrase," Keeley recalled. As if to prove this, Wyman proceeded to unzip his fly and urinate on the garage wall. The Stones then piled back into the Daimler and they sped off, giving the reverse victory salute through the window.

[www.rollingstone.com]

We Piss Anywhere: 'Sympathy for Mick Jagger'
By David Masciotra 12 September 2011
Marc Spitz begins his insightful, important, and newly released book, Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue, by asking, “Can we continue to worship and desire a man whom we don’t really like anymore?”

From that point on, Spitz skillfully leads readers through a tour of Mick Jagger’s carnival life fronting the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world, acting in several films, and breaking many more hearts. It becomes obvious at a very early point in the book that the use of pronoun “we” in Spitz introductory question is dubious. Spitz not only likes Mick Jagger, he loves Mick Jagger.
He convincingly argues that the force of Jagger’s creativity and cool is of equal importance to the brilliance, success, and longevity of The Rolling Stones as that belonging to the poetic pirate Keith Richards. Jagger is not merely a sexually suggestive song-and-dance man, but also a charismatic entertainer, a deeply versatile singer, and a highly inventive songwriter. Spitz defends Jagger against critics who claim he is a sophisticated, soulless sellout by pointing out the obvious facts that Keith Richards “cashes all the same checks” and that Jagger, despite endorsement deals, marketing gimmicks, and routine ego-trips, has protected his music from corruption, whether with The Rolling Stones or with Dave Stewart or with little known blues bands, he has pledged his fealty to the muse of music.
Although Spitz does make a few missteps—his defense of Jagger’s acceptance of knighthood from the queen of England as “bringing the establishment to him” is charitable to the point of naïveté—and his insistence that Jagger has an equally pure rock ‘n’ roll musical heart as Richards is akin to kicking a field goal on third down. The tougher and better play is to make the argument that Jagger’s experimentation with dance beats, technology, and genre-bending hybridization makes the Rolling Stones a much more attractive, appealing, and ambitious band than what would have existed if Richards won every argument on behalf of the blues. “Miss You”, “Worried About You”, “Emotional Rescue”, “Fool to Cry”, “Undercover of the Night”, and several other bold productions strengthen and deepen the Stones catalogue. It’s bizarre that Spitz often praises these songs individually, but neglects to categorize them together as a cohesive collection that demonstrates the necessity for and power of Jagger’s inspired experimentation.
The music of the Rolling Stones and the independent endeavors of Jagger combine for an absorbing topic. Few subjects, however, are as fascinating as the wonderfully elusive man behind the microphone.
Jagger is a libidinous trickster from folklore; full of complication, complexity, and contradiction. Handling his life story requires delicacy, empathy, and sensitivity to the emotional and cultural dynamism that Jagger creates, inculcates, and represents. Spitz proves he is more than capable. He wisely and comically navigates the landmine-filled terrain of Jagger’s lothario sexual persona by separating him from Warren Beaty, Wilt Chamberlin, and other men famous or infamous, depending on one’s perspective, for their promiscuity. Jagger, Spitz concludes, is irresistible to many women because he is hypnotically confident in his own sexuality, which creates an aura of mystery around the question, “What is behind that bodily comfort and sexual confidence?” Jagger is also forward to the point of absurdity. Spitz rightfully calls this seduction style camp—like something out of a farcical comedy sketch that only an androgynous Rolling Stone could pull of without inciting unfriendly laughter.
Without hesitation, Spitz also confronts the code of The Rolling Stones that many writers, including me, have written about. The code—the lifestyle of rebellion that provides a loose ethical system of behavioral provocations and limitation—is entirely Richard’s creation. For Jagger, The Rolling Stones is a vehicle for him to discover his own identity and to gain deeper insights into his unreachable soul. There’s a photograph of Jagger wearing a T-Shirt that says, “Who the @#$%& is Mick Jagger?” Spitz makes it clear that Jagger cannot really answer that question, and everything he does—from singing to acting to womanizing—is a search for a new clue to his most inaccessible mystery. For this reason, Spitz claims, Jagger is almost incapable of looking into his past with an objective and reflective eye, and will therefore never write his own memoirs.
If Spitz’s prediction comes true, Stones fans and popular music readers can rest comfortably knowing that Jagger is not only an engaging biography, but also a compelling work of cultural criticism. The book is at its best when Spitz devotes an entire chapter to describing, scrutinizing, and analyzing the famous “We piss anywhere” incident when The Rolling Stones, early in their career, stopped at a petro station outside of London to use the washroom. The attendant, who described Jagger, Richards, and company as “shaggy haired monsters”, refused out of fear for what these hippie maniacs might do once inside. Jagger took command of the situation and said those immortal words announcing his self-governed universal urination pass. The band proceeded to literally piss anywhere, while they danced and chanted the lead singer’s new refrain. Spitz shows his perceptiveness by making this incident the centerpiece of the book. It’s the moment that the myth surrounding the Stones was born and it was the moment that captured the threat and excitement of the sound, persona, and attitude of the band.
Spitz, for all his brilliance and insight, stops too soon, however. “We piss anywhere” is also the moment in which we can begin to answer the two questions that loom large over the entire narrative of Jagger as told in Jagger. “Can we still worship and desire a man we don’t really like anymore?” and “Who the @#$%& is Mick Jagger?”
The only person who can answer the latter question in the private sense is Jagger, of course, and Spitz persuasively makes the case that even he is lost. The public Jagger, however, is discernible and identifiable. Identifying the public Jagger answers the former question regarding desire and worship.

Mick Jagger is the devil. He’s the devil that millions of people continue to desire and worship, but cannot be sure if they like. He sings the devil’s anthem, proclaiming his wealth, taste, and presence at some of the greatest evils committed in the history of humanity, but more importantly and significantly, he’s the avatar for the swaggering, lethally self-assured hedonist who will piss anywhere with a cocky smirk written all over his face that only confirms there is nothing you can do to stop him. He’s the avatar for the devil that resides everywhere at once and builds a house within every heart. He’s the avatar for the devil within us – the devil that we simultaneously love and hate – the devil whose existence we simultaneously work to affirm and deny.
Richards has gained heroic status as the defender of rock ‘n’ roll and the avatar of purity, because despite his drug abuse and troubles with the law, he has the integrity to appear on stage with Jagger as the devil’s conscience. Our better nature tells us to desire and worship Richards, but the devil kicking his hooves on our hearts and poking our imaginations with his pitchfork wants us to desire and worship, and that is why we can never let him go.
Like the devil, Jagger possesses the spirits of those who travel too close to one another. The entire group shouted “We piss anywhere” at the direction of Jagger like a psychotic band of demons. Arenas full of women went into chaotic convulsions of libidinal rage when he moved his hips. Spitz gathers stories of Jagger stealing girlfriends from Richards, Brian Jones, Bryan Ferry, and Eric Clapton. Mere mortals are helpless to defend against the temptation of Jagger’s majestic magic that weaves spells to communicate directly with one’s darker impulses.
Christian theology teaches that the devil is omnipresent. “We piss anywhere” can easily transform into “we piss everywhere.”
I’ve often been complimented or accused, depending on the company, for dancing like Jagger. A friend of mine once told me a story about running into an ex-girlfriend when he was drunk and deciding to approach her in an arrogant style after deciding that that is what Jagger would do. A different friend told me that once at a boring wedding reception, he jumped on the dance floor and did his best to impersonate Jagger’s patented chicken walk dance, hoping to inject life into the party. The devil got us all, and will get us all again. The devil will also get millions more when the lights are low and the spirits are high.

It’s easy, but pointless, to condemn the morality of the devil and question the morality of any act Mick Jagger inspires.
Jagger is a genius and a giant, and a figure of immeasurable musical and pop cultural importance. Spitz has done an invaluable service by celebrating the brilliance and stature of Jagger in an act of sympathy for the devil. Spitz has also reminded his audience of the need to acknowledge the devil they know lives inside of them. The act of acknowledgement comes from the recognition that the public Jagger is worthy of desire and worship for reasons that go beyond his artistic accomplishment.
Psychologist Carl Jung said that all people live in shadows and light. The ultimate danger facing us is if we deny the shadows, because then we will lose our ability to distinguish between shadow and light, eventually losing all light while deceiving ourselves into believing that we covered in it. Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Ramble, Rogue introduces us to a wild, dancing, seductive shadow.

[www.popmatters.com]

Quote
stonesrule
"least sentimental..." Did Spitz take a poll of fellow rock stars?

I love to read and there are numerous writers who know music that I admire -- Jon Pareles, Stanley Booth, Nik Cohn, the late Lester Bangs etc. etc.

I have a great local library and wouldn't you know they'd just gotten a copy of the Spitz book when I was there yesterday afternoon to return books. I read half of it last night and will get round to the rest over the weekend. He'a lively writer which is always appealing but I haven't come across anything particularly new or unknown to the voracious Stones fans at IORR.

One area I would like to have seen both Spitz and Keith explore is at least a brief discussion or facts and figures on the Rolling Stones songs. I was told several times in the past that it's a fifty-fifty arrangement on advances and royalties between Mick and Keith...which would certainly make Mick a very generous co-writer in terms of Keith's erractic output.

Hi, stonesrule, did you finish it? Is there anything new?

Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue
By Michaelangelo Matos September 21, 2011

[origin.avclub.com]

Quote
proudmary
We Piss Anywhere: 'Sympathy for Mick Jagger'
By David Masciotra 12 September 2011

...

[www.popmatters.com]

Wow! What a FANTASTIC review. If the book is as good as this review is then I'll certainly read it.

Thanks for posting, proudmary.

Drew

Yeah, thanx,Mary!
And some nice links I found through that too! All those links on AcclaimedMusic,etc. . .
Some great stuff!
Just looking at those album lists from the 60/70's or 65's singles . .
Memories of great music . .

Perhaps the appeal of this book is more for readers who are not that familiar with the lives of the Rolling Stones and their music.

Very little new. Well-written.

It says everything about the Stones’ fall from critical favor after 1972’s Exile On Main St. that “You’re So Vain,” from 1974, gets its own chapter, rather than the trio of albums the Stones made after Exile. Spitz is sharp on why, calling Goats Head Soup (1973), It’s Only Rock ’N’ Roll (1974), and Black And Blue (1976) “personality records […] They’re great because, like certain Jack Nicholson or Robert De Niro films, the root artist is appealing and the work of art marks a fascinating time in pop history, not because they contain, as with their late ’60s run, one killer song after another. They’re The Passenger or New York, New York, not Five Easy Pieces or Taxi Driver.”

I love that analogy!
Because while "Passenger" may not have the epic, iconic, game-changing aura of "Five Easy Pieces" - its an interesting work, and of its time.
In the same sense, "New York, New York", like De Niro, is more fun than "Taxi Driver".
That's the best way I've heard anyone categorize GHS, IORR and B&B...
they have great value in the arc of the Stones' history.

The Devil/Jagger thing is so old it's tiresome. It was even worn out when Anthony Scaduto wrote his stupid bio of Jagger, "Everyone's Lucifer". Spitz is a mediocrity who sucks on the teat of rock stardom - nothing more, nothing less.

....I think Jagger is kind of lost.....I thought he looked very uncomfortable in the GMA interview...it seemed to me like he was trying too hard to have a good time.

I'm half way through. Although it reads well its superficial and hasn't really re-positioned Micks reputation for me. It's like a long school essay.

Quote
CousinC
Yeah, thanx,Mary!
And some nice links I found through that too! All those links on AcclaimedMusic,etc. . .
Some great stuff!
Just looking at those album lists from the 60/70's or 65's singles . .
Memories of great music . .

Thanks for posting, proudmary.
Drew


Thanks, it's nice. You're welcome

Rolling Stones Rivalry: The Case for Mick

Even loyal Stones fans aren’t afraid to side with one Glimmer Twin over the other: you’re either a Mick Jagger fan, or you're a Keith Richards fan. Recently, the pendulum seems to have swung to Richards, who earned heaps of cool points with his recent autobiography “Life.” But music writer Marc Spitz swims against the cultural current in his new book “Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue.” Spitz talks about why Jagger is more than just the brains behind the Rolling Stones.

(30min.interview with Spitz - mostly about Jagger not his book)
[www.wnyc.org]

StupidGuy2....Your post and the "analogy" are VERY well put.
As I've said before, I just can't imagine a writer as solid as Spitz spending so much time writing a book without having been able to sit down with Jagger.

Now THAT would have been special...since Mick tends to be more open with someone who is professional and obviously intelligent. Perhaps Spitz should keep pursuing the idea of geting an interview and do an insert in his book?

Marc Spitz Interviews Chess Records Scion Marshall Chess
When you interview Marshall Chess you know you're talking to a rock and roller. He just sounds rock and roll as you will soon hear. In a snippet from this long, great chat with the Chess Records scion turned Rolling Stones Records runner, Chess recalls first meeting the band in the legendary Chicago studios in 1964 and how the locals perceived these strange, British invaders and vice versa.
TO LISTEN [soundcloud.com]

Jagger, by Marc Spitz
J. Michael Welton,Editor and Publisher, ArchitectsAndArtisans.com

It's a book tailor-made for its times.
"People tend to see things now as clips," says Vanity Fair blogger and author Marc Spitz. "We live in a YouTube culture where we see things in shapes and vignettes."
So he structured Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue to appeal to an audience with the shortest of attention spans. It's a book that tells its story in a series of interludes, which makes perfect sense for readers who see the world as a procession of snapshots, and who take those snapshots themselves, with ever-present camera phones for instant uploads onto Facebook pages.
Spitz approached the book conventionally enough, researching it like a biography, though he wasn't able talk to Mick Jagger himself. The singer hasn't done a major sit-down interview since 1995. "I don't think he looks back," says the author. "Maybe he doesn't want to dredge up the past."

Still, Spitz's timing is good. The Rolling Stones are hot copy.

While Keith Richard's autobiography, Life, recently punched past sales of one million copies, Jagger busied himself by organizing an intercontinental super group called SuperHeavy, releasing a new album earlier this month. And the question du jour seems to be whether the guitarist and vocalist will pull together a tour for the Rolling Stones 50th anniversary in 2012. The two seem at odds over that, with tension still in the air over negative comments about Jagger, a.k.a. "Brenda," in Richards' book.
The pair has a love/hate relationship that's almost as old as rock and roll itself. As Spitz notes, it has its roots in their early years as boys in the middle-class London suburb of Dartford, where the two lived, literally and figuratively, on different sides of the tracks.
Jagger is not a pro-Mick spin job, and it's hardly an anti-Keith book either. Rather, it offers a contrarian view, designed to restore some balance to the pair, and see Jagger's life from a new perspective. "One mistake that people make is that Keith is the heart of the band, and Mick is the brain. Sometimes that's true and sometimes it's not," says the author. "The fact is, it takes both Mick and Keith to make the Stones -- there's no value without Mick and there's no value without Keith."
But back to the book's structure: Rather than uses multiple sources throughout, Spitz selected one source for each section, focusing on key moments in Jagger's life. Thus activist Tariq Ali serves as primary source for the period centered around protest- and assassination- laden 1968, while velvet-throated singer Carly Simon, known for her "You're So Vain" lyrics, sits in for a tamer 1972. Even Marshall Chess, who worked first with blues-laden Chess Records and later with Rolling Stones Records, gets his own era, from 1970 to 1971.
"I definitely sat down with my editor for a lot of back-and-forth about how to present it," Spitz says. "We talked about the way we see things now, and about how we read. I had to write it in a way that had to do more with less."
A flavor of that can be found in this paragraph from a section called "I Went Down to the Demonstration":

Tariq Ali knew that Mick would be at the demonstration. He'd called and informed Ali that he was going to march. "He said, "I'm coming on." But he did not want to speak. He was there as an observer, a sort of artist-journalist, traveling on the periphery, although rumors began to spread that he was dancing in front of police horses and chucking bricks at shop windows (most of which were boarded up). In truth, he and Faithfull kept near the bank of cameras and didn't charge into the fray. It was a personal risk, nonetheless. With the mounted police, caught up in an anarchic clash, however, he certainly ran the risk of being just another long-haired agitator. He certainly wasn't dressed in stage wear, but rather a simple polo shirt and overcoat -- student garb. "They certainly could have smashed his head," Ali agrees. "They smashed a lot of heads that day. He wanted to be among the crowd. He didn't care what the consequences of going out would be; that's absolutely true -- obviously had he been beaten up by the cops that day there would have been one hell of a storm in the country as a whole; it was a risk and he took that risk."
What he was after, as many were in 1968 -- from London to Prague to Chicago to Mexico City -- was his own "fair share of abuse."

But unlike the rest of us, he could sing about it later, backed up by the world's greatest rock and roll band.

[www.huffingtonpost.com]

One exasperating thing to read in the book was a member of the Red Devils saying about their recording their album with Mick, (paraphrase) "We recorded the ENTIRE album with Mick in SEVEN HOURS." It's true it was all covers, but Mick and Keith have written many a song in a half-hour or so. It just makes me think--except for their earliest years--of all the time wasted between Stones albums. (With the exception, of course, of the more-than-worthy "Freejack"....JOKE!)

Here's a great quote from the book:

"The Rolling Stones are a covenant for Keith and they are a covenant for us. For Mick, they subsidize and sometimes impede a philosophical life-search."

In other words, Mick is considerably less attached to the Stones than we are!

Drew

REVIEW: Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue
Book by Marc Spitz
by Brian D. Johnson on Friday, October 14, 2011

There’s only one reason for this book to exist: to redress the nasty bruising Mick Jagger took in Life, last year’s blockbuster memoir by bandmate Keith Richards. Jagger is not an authorized biography, but it’s such an affectionate portrait that its subject, who can’t be bothered to write his own memoir, could have commissioned it. Spitz, Vanity Fair’s music blogger, doesn’t dig up any new dirt in the royal saga of the Rolling Stones, who mark their 50th anniversary next spring. But he tackles what he calls the Jagger Problem—the popular notion that Mick is the band’s cold-blooded brain and aristocratic gadfly while Keith is its heart and soul, salt of the earth, keeper of the flame—even though he nearly killed the Stones with his heroin habit. Spitz suggests the dichotomy is a media myth, nurtured by Keith’s flair for burnishing his anti-hero image, and Mick’s reluctance to offer anything as banal as a sound bite. Having interviewed both several times, I see his point: talking to Mick is like playing squash with a sphinx; Keith becomes your best mate within minutes.

What the book does best is magnify the seismic events in the Stones’ formative years: the scandal of their 1967 drug bust (with Marianne Faithfull on LSD, wearing only a fur rug and the infamous Mars bar); Jagger’s erotic method acting with Richards’s girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, on the set of Performance; the swimming pool death of Brian Jones; and the murder of an 18-year-old kid at Altamont in 1970, which Jagger impassively watches on tape in the film Gimme Shelter. But Spitz traces the genesis of the Stones’ tabloid image to a fluke. A News of the World reporter mistook Jones for Jagger in a bar, and Jones, playing along, regaled him with tales of his (Mick’s) wild drug habits. Now Jagger is producing a movie called Tabloid, in which he will star as a Rupert Murdoch-like media baron. Ah, the revenge of the misunderstood rock star—best served stone cold.

[www2.macleans.ca]

Sometimes that's true and sometimes it's not," says the author.

Wow. As if one doesn't suggest the other when one is correct. This whole thing has gotten beyond what it was and is, this Keith is the roll, Mick is the financial adviser deal.

Of course, the 50 year anniversary thing is just The Rolling Stones by name, not as a band. Too bad these media types don't and won't bother pointing that out.

Hey Title5, considering how many here look at their output going back as far as even Undercover as being crap, how would Mick etc be 'wasting time' doing other things if all they have done as the Stones is crap to begin with?

The evolution of Mick Jagger
By: Steve Fast

A strange thing has happened to Mick Jagger since the ’70s decade of excess. The lead singer of the Rolling Stones has transformed, in the eyes of many, from bad-boy rebel to a shrewd, business-savvy sort of villian.

Music journalist Marc Spitz examines this perception of the world’s most famous frontman in his new book “Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue.”

Spitz tells Steve Fast that Jagger is more like his fans than his partner and sometimes rival Keith Richards.

Listen to the interview…
[wjbc.com]

I'm about 60 pages in and I can't say that Spitz' spin on Mick is really unique....it just seems to be rehashing everything I already knew, for the most part. I still am enjoying it, somewhat. I liked the way he described the evolution of " As Tears Go By"....how Mick and Keith wrote the song as 20 year olds, quite a feat!! They wrote it because Andrew Oldham told them to come up with a song for Marianne Faithful...and it's actually written from the perspective of an older woman looking back on her life. Marianne re-recorded it at 40 and only then did she appreciate the lyrics and the real meaning of the song.
I know that you all know this but on a personal note, when I saw Mick and Keith step into the spotlight together with Keith accompanying Mick on acoustic guitar that night at Radio City ( the Robin Hood benefit concert, March 14, 2006), I cried. Mick sang " As Tears Go By" with such emotion that you could hear a pin drop when the song ended...and then the roar of applause. It was a moment that I will always remember. It's especially poignant now with all that has transpired...and when I think of that night I think that the best days have passed...so sad.

>>I can't say that Spitz' spin on Mick is really
unique....it just seems to be rehashing everything
I already knew, for the most part<<

I'm about half-way through and I feel the same way,
mickschix. (There are notable errors too - for instance
the author says that Mick has the same "knowing brown
eyes" as his father Joe.)

Yes, he does make some glaring mistakes...the eye color is a BAD mistake! I just keep reading...nothing else in the house of interest at the moment, I guess. Are you going to finish it, Marmalade?

Boy, what a load pseudo-intellectual bullshit! I reads like it's written for 16 year-olds who pretend that they're 18 or 21.

Mick Jagger: Pop Culture Pioneer
October 18, 2011 11:12PM
By Marc Spitz

Even as a kid, I knew that Mick was important. He must have meant something to my parents, too, because when I was about 10, I was given a Rolling Stones album for each night of Chanukah. But up to adulthood, and well into a career spent examining rock 'n' roll stars, I think I only appreciated Mick Jagger’s contributions in a macro sense: the Stones as the anti-Beatles, and Mick as an androgynous sexual liberator. It wasn’t until I began researching and writing a book about Mick, however, that I began to see the micro ways in which he influenced culture. After realizing how these small revolutions made a deep impact in the modern age, I began to appreciate Mick Jagger anew. Here are four of the biggest innovations Jagger contributed to popular culture:

1. The Rock Star Celebrity. By the end of the 1960s, there were rock stars and there were celebrities. It was during this time that Mick Jagger invented the concept of the rock star/celebrity hybrid. The Beatles had broken up, and the Rolling Stones—along with The Who, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd—were trying to establish themselves as the greatest band in the world. Jagger and his bandmates were suddenly tasked with the job of either redefining themselves for the coming decade, or fading away like some of their fellow British invaders.
Then Mick met Bianca. There was a media circus wedding. Bianca became a celebrity overnight, the first star who was famous for doing nothing. She wasn’t an actress or a singer. She was simply ... Bianca. Her elegance and mysteriousness, and her status as a fashion muse, made her an instant icon. And when Bianca skyrocketed to fame, she took the Stones with her.
Rock stars were not on the cover of People magazine. Rock stars were not embraced by high society. But the rock star/celebrity could travel in nearly any social circle. Mick and Bianca's life as superstars helped to influence the larger-than-life existences of later musicians such as David Bowie, Madonna, Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

2. The Viral Campaign: In 1972, on the heels of the tragic concert at Altamont Speedway, the Stones decided to stealthily promote their return to the North American touring circuit. "The 1972 tour was the first great viral campaign," said Peter Rudge, former manager of The Rolling Stones. The shows themselves were triumphs, but what you didn’t see—what went down backstage, and how the Stones orchestrated the whisper campaign about it—truly separated them from the pack.
First, there was the disappearance of a lengthy Rolling Stone magazine article, written (but never completed) by Truman Capote. Even more tantalizing were the rumors of an explicit documentary film, shot by Robert Frank, that was meant to capture the naked, uncompromised reality of the North American tour. But that was buried too. Why? Perhaps because of sex? Drugs? Maybe someone threw a TV over a balcony? The Stones gave no answer.
Spreading around the idea that a tape exists that is full of sex, drugs and TVs thrown over balconies that you must never, ever look at? That’s where you enhance a myth. That’s where you make the long money. “You let everyone know they can’t see it or read it,” Rudge said. “Mick got all that.”

3. The Meta Cameo: There were of course, precedents. Babe Ruth plays Babe Ruth in Pride of the Yankees. Norma Desmond plays cards with the real Buster Keaton in Sunset Boulevard. Yet these performances, while amusing, don’t really provide any dagger-sharp commentary, either on themselves or their times. In 1978, however, Mick Jagger played "himself" in an meta world where there were no Beatles, only ... Rutles.
Spearheaded by Monty Python’s Eric Idle and producer Lorne Michaels, the TV special The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash, not only took on every 1960s sacred cow—screaming girls, meditation, drugs, protests—but attempted, and nearly succeeded, to get past them once and for all. In this proto-mockumentary, a 35-year-old Mick (playing the role of "Mick Jagger: Rock Star") calmly sits on a couch and gamely answers mock questions about the era he came to personify. In under five minutes of screen time, he truly ends the 1960s in a way that Altamont or the Tate-LaBianca murders never really could. (Credit also goes to fellow 60s icon Paul Simon, who makes a cameo as himself in the film as well).

4. The Rick Rubin Comeback: You know how in the early 1990s, Quentin Tarantino gained a reputation for taking a well-worn movie star—say, John Travolta or Kurt Russell—shining them up, reminding audiences what they loved about them in the first place, and then placing them back into the public eye to garner new respect and fortune? Well, Tarantino had a musical counterpart who used and perfected a similar formula: The post-Def Jam Records Rick Rubin. And Mick Jagger was Rubin's John Travolta.
By the early 90s, Mick’s solo output seemed to be forever trapped in the 80s. Screaming guitars; Miami Vice keyboards and percussion; shoulder pads and near-mullets mired Jagger's creative output. In 1993, it was unheard of for a veteran like Mick Jagger to seek out a producer like Rick Rubin—Rubin was the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Slayer, not Beatles and Stones. But that very fact is probably what drew the 50-year-old Jagger to Rubin's door.
Jagger and Rubin made not just one excellent album, but two. The former, Wandering Spirit, stands in many music critic's minds as the finest Stones solo work in history. The latter, a never-released work Mick recorded with Hollywood bar band The Red Devils, is just Mick, a harmonica and a mean, lean, loud blues band. The recording is so simple that it’s hard to appreciate just what a stroke of genius it was to place Mick there at that time. The bootleg of these "Red Devil" sessions is easy to find. And while listening to the recording is probably nothing like seeing the group perform live, as a few lucky Hollywood hipsters did one night at the King King club, there’s more life to those songs than a lot of mega-budget 80s tracks.
After Jagger's comeback, Rubin was sought after to revitalize the careers of many more rock legends, including Johnny Cash, Tom Petty and Neil Diamond.

[www.biography.com]