I'm well into the book now - great read - insightful - and Mick indeed is his own man. What's wrong with that? Keith judges others just a bit too much while Mick lets all the BS sail right over him. That's class.

>>Are you going to finish it, Marmalade?<<

Just finished it this afternoon, Mickschix. As you mentioned,
nothing really new in the book, but I was interested enough
to see it through to the end.

I finally got the book, and read it in a couple of days. Just to say something quick now. I might write a larger review some day.

It is easily the best biography of any individual Stone, even though to achieve that status there is not unfortunately so much needed... So for the low expectations, it was much better than I thought. There is a mission going on - to reveal the mystery called Mick Jagger - why the guy who nobody seems to like, is seen uncool for decades now, is able to remain at the top from decade to decade. Splitz especially tries to remind and explain the world of his artistic, risky-taking, challenging, adventurous side, which séemed to have forgotten or never seen clearly enough.

There is not too much new facts - Splitz seemingly relies that the reader knows the facts or the story good enough already (and, like always happens, makes some little factual errors, like claiming "Little Red Rooster" was their first number one in UK)). It is a kind of (partly self-reflective) reaction to Keith-myth, of which he like the rock press generally, had taken for granted, but Splitz points out very clearly that this is not "anti-Keith book". Trying to balance between the Glimmer Twins he manages alright, me thinks. (He could have been more critical to LIFE, though).

So what makes the book interesting is the drive to study Mick Jagger's many-faced mystery. Unfortunately the task was way too high. Yes, he revails something, and defends/understands some of ´Jagger's moves and actions from not so usual rock-press friendly way, but I think he still can't really say much about the subject matter (I think we have managed better here at IORR sometimes). The result finally is so 'Jagger-like': so many things are talked in outset, and many interviewd people are offering their contingent views of the man, but the man himself remains unknown. A nice bunch of blokes, indeed. His analysis of the seventies, and the change of counter-culture icon Jagger of the 60's to the jetset superstar of the 70's, and seeing Bianca's role there, is a spot on, and clearly the strongest part of the book, and probably its most important contribution to 'Stoneslogy' in a long run. But that I can't say of the 80's solo career 'explanation' with which my own impressions do not meet his very much. The same as with Keith's LIFE, the bulllets ran out from saying anything accurate or intelligible from the 80's on. It is the story of the 60's and 70's that clearly inspire the writer.

Over-all I like his way of catching attention to some contingent keý moments, and write his story based on them: The Tami Show challenge against James Brown, "we piss anywhere" accident (which is simply excellent), Truman Capote's role in 1972 tour, making of "You're So Vain", The Living Colour/Guns'n'Roses-controversy in 1989, are delicious and insightful pieces to read.

But still in the end, I felt disappointed after reading the book; the task - catching Jagger as an artist, as a person, and trying to 'explain' his motives, decisions, etc. - was simply still way too big. Maybe it is finally that making Mick look 'good' is still a task impossible by our traditional 'rock press' means. Maybe we have not yet right or rich enough vocabulary for that. But we are getting there little by little in our study of the most exciting and mysterios music figure of our times...

But a must read to anyone interested in The Rolling Stones, and especially obligatory anyone who has read LIFE to get at least a bit more balanced view of the creative motor behind The Rolling Stones.

- Doxa



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2012-07-19 11:59 by Doxa.

Agree with you that it is far better attempt to understand and explain the phenomenon of Jagger. And that despite the right direction and desire of the author this attempt is basically disappointing
I think the problem is that Jagger to be approached not from the standpoint of rock writing - he is too big and controversial figure for that.
The writers of rock biographies still do not have a narrative that would help them to construct Mick biography
All of these biographies fall into two categories. The first is tabloid fascination with the Jagger's sex life , the second is the comparison between Jagger and Richards
And although these two factors are important they can not fully describe or even come close to understanding Jagger

It's interesting that this book gets very poor reviews on Amazon - much worse than even Andersen book. Strange enough, if we take into account that this is the first attempt to understand and talk about Jagger as an artist not as celebrity

Quote
slew
This is an interesting thread. I can never put my finger on what really makes Mick tick and he is so guarded in his interviews that one can not really know what goes on his head. Is he bored by the blues?? Sometimes I think he is and then he comes up with something like Blue. He seems to want to make hit records and still be in the game. I really wish he would try some mature subjects like Dylan has on his last 4 records. Mick has enough money and does not need hit records. Again I never know what to think of Mick. He obviously cares about the Stones as well it is he that makes sure all of these huge tours go off without a hitch so I don't know. I do think at one time he was a rebel but not anymore.

Mick is full of contradictions - that kind of explains why he remains a mystery.
Regarding his attitude to interviews - he doesn't see in them the opportunity to express and explain his personality. But why should he do it? We are all spoiled now in the era of the Internet and the availability of the information. The artists of the past were interviewed? We make a picture of them relying on their creative work. Jagger is quite open to interpretation in his lyrics and in his perfomances on stage. Here is another paradox - Marianne said that precisely those qualities for which Jagger is most criticized make him such a great artist. And she's herself one of his most stringent critic



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-08-07 13:29 by proudmary.

There is a curious review on Andersen MICK book. I mean somebody find it "superb"...but some of his ideas are interesting and the book just an excuse to talk about Jagger

Mick Jagger Is Large, He Contains Multitudes
MIck Jagger may be the most important performer of the last 50 years.
By Jim Curtis, Contributor

While I was reading Christopher Andersen’s superb biography Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger, I kept thinking of a quotation from Walt Whitman: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Mick Jagger is indeed large—a larger than life performer who has lived life on his own terms for half a century and counting.
And Mick does contain multitudes. More specifically, he contains within himself, within his creative genius, within his persona as a performer, oppositions that he does not wish to resolve. We can’t resolve them, either, so the line in “Sympathy for the Devil” that goes “what’s puzzling you is the nature of my game” is both ironic and accurate at the same time.
To take the obvious example, let’s consider his sex life. The general estimate is that he has slept with about 4,000 women over the last 50 years. That works out to about one new woman every five days, 52 weeks a year, for 50 years. He is probably the most famous beneficiary of the sexual revolution!
And yet Andersen quotes Mick as saying, “Everyone knows that everyone is bisexual.” Mick has also had numerous relationships with men—most obviously, with Keith Richards. Andersen quotes Jerry Hall, one of Mick’s ex-wives to the effect that, “Mick loves Keith, you know. They’re like a married couple.” But Andersen says that he also slept with Eric Clapton, Rudolf Nureyev, and numerous other men.
So is Mick straight or is he gay? This is Mick Jagger we’re talking about, so there is no either/or—there is only a both/and. It is essential to understand the “both/and” is the nature of his game. Throughout his astounding career he has come on stage and flaunted the juxtaposition of gay and straight. He has defied us to reject him, and he has defied us to simplify him. It turns out that we can’t do either, and what that means is that we can’t take our eyes off him when he’s on stage.
This is one reason why Mick is such a British performer—someone who could not possibly do what he does if he were American. Although plenty of gay British men, such as writer Oscar Wilde and computer pioneer Alan Turing, had their lives destroyed by British intolerance of homosexuality, within the arts community homosexuality (and, as in Mick’s case, bisexuality) is widely accepted. It is enough here to mention the Bloomsbury Circle of the '20s and '30s that included such well-known figures as Lytton Strachey and Virginia Woolf.
Mick thus has a lot in common with David Bowie, with whom he had an intense relationship. And of course some major performers in British rock and roll are gay; I have in mind not just Elton John, the obvious example, but also Boy George, and the late Freddy Mercury of Queen.
British society also gave Mick a coherent class structure within which to define his multitudes. The easy and obvious take on rock and roll, especially as the Stones have practiced it, is to say that it’s a form of rebellion. And surely Mick and Keith were engaging in some form of rebellion when in the early sixties they lived in an apartment of indescribable filth. After reading Andersen’s description of it, you wonder why they didn’t die of dysentery.
And yet, as always, there’s another side to Mick—the social climber. As Andersen forcefully puts it, “For essentially his entire adult life, this vocal enemy of the Establishment has also been cozy with England’s aristocracy.” Cozy is a polite word here, considering that Mick supposedly slept with Princess Margaret, the Queen’s sister. Still, as Keith himself acknowledges in his autobiography, there has been a two-sided flirtation between the Rolling Stones and British aristocracy. Nevertheless, when Mick accepted a knighthood in 2003, Keith was shocked and horrified. It may have been the only time when he had something in common with the Queen, who found an excuse not to attend the ceremony.
Although you would never know it to watch him on stage, there is a synergy between Mick the social climber and Mick the businessman, who made the money that fueled the social climb. A former head of Rolling Stones Records once commented, “He has a very, very shrewd business mind…It’s impossible to overstate how clever he is in this regard.” It may be impossible to overstate how clever a businessman Mick is, but the fact that they made 1.7 billion dollars in one ten-year period speaks volumes.
When you make money like this in the British arts community—whether that means rock and roll, or fashion, or film--society gives you certain things to do, and certain ways to live. You buy a house in London, and another house in the country. Mick and Keith and the other Rolling Stones made these purchases, just as the Beatles did. Mick later bought a chateau in the Loire Valley of France, and a beach house in the Bahamas, among other things. Contrast these multiple real estate holdings with the very American rootlessness of Bob Dylan, who can afford to live anywhere, but chooses to live everywhere and nowhere.
But there is one American with whom Mick has a lot in common—Steve Jobs. Like Mick, Steve was a genius who famously wanted “to make a dent in the universe.” Thanks to Walter Isaacson’s biography, we now know that Jobs was not, to put it mildly, a nice man. He screamed and yelled and browbeat Apple employees until they turned products that came as close to perfection as anything an American corporation had ever put on the market.
It’s fair to say, then, that Mick is the Steve Jobs of rock and roll. For all his life he has been driven and calculating. He has always been ready to yell at people and fire them without regret when it was time to move on. And of course he’s seduced and abandoned all those thousands of women without a second thought. He’s mellowed, a little, in old age, but in the '60s and '70s his drive for fame never let him care much for people. Even the death of Brian Jones in 1967 had relatively little effect on him—considering the key role that Brian played in the formation of the Stones’ sound
And the beat goes on. The force of nature that we know as Mick Jagger goes on managing his multiple projects and multiple relationships, children, and grandchildren. Like Steve Jobs, he’s made a dent in the world of Western culture.
[www.themortonreport.com]

No satisfaction for Stones' fans in dirt-dishing Jagger bio

Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger by Christopher Andersen

If author Christopher Andersen had turned out to be a lawyer rather than a biographer, it's easy to believe he'd have been one of the ambulance-chasing variety.
Andersen writes books that tend to be labeled "scandalous" and "controversial," tomes with titles like "The Day Diana Died" and "The Day John Died," or more florid affairs like "William and Kate: A Royal Love Story."
Now, Andersen has turned his attention and his pen to rock's most iconic frontman, Mick Jagger.
Jagger, unlike several of Andersen's past subjects, is still alive and able to defend himself. It seems reasonable to assume, considering this fact, that Andersen would tread lightly and proceed carefully. Instead, he runs amok, assembling a laundry list of former lovers and third-tier "insiders" in order to prove his overarching thesis - that Jagger is a bisexual sex fiend who has spent his entire career attempting to couple with any reasonably good-looking human foolish enough to sit still long enough to allow Sir Mick to make his move.
Yawn. Perhaps for his next book, Andersen will set out to prove that water is indeed wet.
"Mick" is tabloid fodder all the way, its assertions and hypotheses boasting more holes than a sizable chunk of Swiss cheese, and its tone condescending and tawdry throughout. Which means it's likely to match, if not outshine, the sales figures attained by some of the author's previous efforts. Dirt-dishing sells, facts and sources be damned.
As a "definitive" Jagger biography, however, its merits are a touch dubious. If Andersen has anything more than a surface understanding of the Rolling Stones as a musical entity existing within a certain historical era, he keeps that information to himself, instead concentrating his attentions on Jagger's sexual exploits and his purported appetites for drugs and drink.
"Mick," as advance buzz indicated, unveils new information on Jagger-ian exploits, based on the author's interviews with former wives, lovers and industry types, all of whom have axes to grind. Its big moments include Andersen's assertion that Jagger and Eric Clapton were lovers in the late '60s. Andersen's source for this little thunderbolt? John Dunbar, "Swinging London" hipster, co-proprietor of the fabled Indica Bookshop, and most tellingly, the man Marianne Faithfull dumped when she took up with Jagger in the late '60s.
When Andersen places Jagger en flagrante delicto with David Bowie, Rudolf Nuryev, Angelina Jolie, Andy Warhol and former first lady of France Carla Bruni, among dozens of others, his sources employ an equally hearsay-based approach. None of the assertions are particularly difficult to believe - Jagger's sexual appetities are not exactly breaking news, and he has fathered children with many women over the years - but Andersen falls short of "proving" anything other than his desire to cash in on the much-publicized 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones, the coattails of which his "Mick" seeks to ride.
Even when Andersen cites no source, he is prone to making wild assertions and cloaking them in the language of straight fact. One of many examples finds the interjection of a hypothesis presented as reportage in the midst of a paragraph describing Jagger's dalliances with renowned "groupie" Pamela Des Barres. "But Jagger was obsessed with sleeping with the wives of his friends," Andersen writes, sans evidence beyond the fact that Jagger messed around with Keith Richards' girlfriend Anita Pallenberg during the filming of "Performance" in the late '60s. That's just plain sloppy.
Speaking of "Performance," Andersen seems to have been granted uncredited access to that film's initial showings. "At an initial screening," he writes in a sourceless voice, "one woman who had seen one graphic sex scene too many vomited on a studio boss' shoe before she could make it to the exit." Great story. Andersen offers no proof that it actually happened, though.
"Mick" is highly entertaining, however - even if its chief entertainment value is based on the fact that it's a journalistic nightmare offering insight into the shoddy practices of tabloid-style biography.
Not since the late Albert Goldman attempted to cut the martyred John Lennon down to size with his putrid "The Lives of John Lennon" has a rock biography so shamelessly sought to cash in on its subject's popularity by tearing him down based on hastily assembled "evidence."
When Andersen has a quote to back up a particular assertion, it tends to be of the less-than-specific variety. "Bisexuality and androgyny were not only accepted, they were encouraged," Andersen quotes Dunbar in support of the assertion that Clapton and Jagger had a homosexual encounter. On the very next page, he offers the same supporting quote again. Apparently, this is supposed to silence any questions the reader might have concerning the veracity of the assertion.
"Mick" never loses its condescending tone, nor does it ever manage to come across as more than an attempted hatchet job. There are laughs offered, but they don't come at the expense of Jagger. One found oneself laughing at Andersen instead.
Ultimately, the best that can be said about "Mick" is that it boasts 46 pages of cool, mostly rare photos. That aside, it's largely a waste of perfectly good trees.
If you've been waiting for the definitive Jagger biography, well, get comfortable. This ain't it.

Jeff Miers is the News' Pop Music Critic. He has been listening to the Rolling Stones since he was four years old.

<it's largely a waste of perfectly good trees>

i picked it up at the bookstore and leafed through it

read like the national enquirer; mick banged this or that, him or her da da da

she said micks 'todger' is da da da, 'mick in bed was da da da ..

that kind of crap

i put it right back and ran out the store

After all,Scaduto's book wasn't a bad one .

>>"But Jagger was obsessed with sleeping with the wives of his friends," Andersen writes, sans evidence beyond the fact that Jagger messed around with Keith Richards' girlfriend Anita Pallenberg during the filming of "Performance" in the late '60s. That's just plain sloppy.

It's pretty well-documented that Mick slept with Carla Bruni, Eric Clapton's girlfriend, as well as Jerry Hall, who was Brian Ferry's fiancé, as well as Brian's girlfriend Pat.

Here is a long list of Mick's conquests - presumably some of them were married or involved with one of his friends.

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

The pic of L'Wren doesn't look right.... Luciana? Lee Radziwill's pic looks like Angie Dickinson. A bunch of other inaccuracies in the text that accompanies the photos, but quite a few liaisons I had never heard of. I find it hard to believe that 'Anybody Seen My Baby?' was written about Mary Badham. Nobody could ever describe her as beautiful, let alone ethereal. Perhaps Stonesrule can enlighten us.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-08-15 14:51 by Bliss.

"Only Mick who moved out of England...in order to not pay taxes"

You are completely incorrect about this.

I had forgotten about the Anderson book, was loafing around Barnes and Noble and there it was...
I leafed through it and it was like every story published in US, People, Star, National Inquirer etc..throughout the 80s was rehashed, sometimes word for word, with the same 'according to one associate'
Anderson didn't even try to uncover any new material. I could have put together a book like this, and I say 'put together' because 'written' is too strong a word to use for what Anderson did.
When he wasn't just rehashing from the tabloids, he would throw in a random 'no one knew that Jagger and P.P. Arnold had been lovers' ....and never provide any details or anything to back it up.
It's even worse than previous books, but while all hack-jobs, Anderson's book doesn't even rate on a 'trashy-but-fun-to-read' level. Most of it we already knew, and the other stuff is pure salacious and unsubstantiated editorializing.
For instance, at one point, Anderson suggests that Jagger was an aloof, apathetic father. He's not a saint, but one thing we all know is that Jagger dotes on all his children.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2012-08-16 00:24 by stupidguy2.

Quote
stonesrule
"Only Mick who moved out of England...in order to not pay taxes"

You are completely incorrect about this.

I recall an interview where Bianca said they had to duck down so as not to be spotted in the windows of their house in London. She said they lived out of suitcases for years, all to dodge being UK tax residents.

Bianca said they had to duck down so as not to be spotted in the windows of their house in London

....fook!! surely they could of afforded curtains ... even some old potato sacks woulda done...



ROCKMAN

This one is really good.

Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger by Christopher Andersen – review
Dorian Lynskey

Photographer Cecil Beaton knew where Mick Jagger's power resided. "The mouth is almost too large," he wrote. "He is beautiful and ugly, feminine and masculine. A rare phenomenon." In that mouth, granted pop-art immortality by John Pasche's Rolling Stones logo, you see Jagger's voracious, infectious appetite. Although he briefly delighted the left with a spasm of '68 radicalism during which he declared, unbelievably, that "there should be no such thing as private property", he had no real affinity for the utopian side of the 60s. He embodied instead the pushy, hard-charging aspect that said that the time for waiting was over and the time for taking was here. His raw desire had a certain brutal purity, and this PE teacher's son combined it with a muscular discipline that ensured the band's improbable longevity. As the US critic Robert Christgau remarked: "He wanted everything, and he was arrogant enough to believe he deserved it."

Unfortunately, these qualities lose their charm with age. Nearing 70, Jagger's piratical foil Keith Richards is fondly regarded as a species of one – homo rocknrollus – while Jagger is seen as the face of Rolling Stones plc. "I want people to think of me as a @#$%& great performer," he once complained to Atlantic Records boss Ahmet Ertegun. "I mean, Keith doesn't have to worry about this shit. I'm Ebenezer Scrooge, and Keith's the pure artiste. Everybody loves Keith."

Christopher Andersen's second biography of Jagger, timed for the band's semicentennial, is likely to make those famous lips twist further downwards. Following Keith's rapturously received memoir, Life, the less forthcoming Mick must settle for this diligent trawl through his dirty laundry. Serial bestseller Andersen pursues subjects almost as energetically as Jagger pursues women, and he knows his audience would rather be privy to the bedroom than the recording studio. "Drug-fuelled antics" and "amorous escapades" abound. The making of the Stones' decadent masterpiece Exile on Main Street merits one page while Jagger's unsuccessful pursuit of a young Angelina Jolie extends across four.

The Jolie story is one of Andersen's big scoops; another is his apparent (though not watertight) confirmation of Jagger's early 70s affair with David Bowie. By the last page it seems quicker to list the people who haven't fallen into Jagger's arms at some point. Only Truman Capote was entirely immune to the singer's magnetism, describing him as "about as sexy as a pissing toad". Armed with many interviews and secondary sources, Andersen presents every lurid tale with a certainty that the cautious reader may not share.

It's not just the minor errors that ring alarm bells – blues musician Alexis Korner becomes Alex Korner, late guitarist Brian Jones's girlfriend Anna Wohlin turns into Anna Wholin – but the selection of material. Andersen takes a line from Richards's Life seemingly to support his retelling of the old myth about Marianne Faithfull and the Mars Bar but ignores Richards's insistence that it never happened. The author also argues that the song Angie is about Bowie despite Richards's own account of how he, not Jagger, wrote most of it. But then Andersen concedes nothing to doubt. You wouldn't think the subject of Carly Simon's You're So Vain was one of pop's most famous mysteries from the way Andersen bluntly states (despite Simon's own denials) that it's Jagger.

Andersen's initial promise to reveal a "mind-spinning tangle of contradictions" never materialises. Brick by brick, he builds an impermeable impression of a ruthless, controlling, disingenuous narcissist. Every interviewee speaks in neat, damning soundbites. Former publicist Keith Altham: "He doesn't have much loyalty. People come and go swiftly, and are decimated." Ex-lover Marianne Faithfull: "Mick basically has contempt for women. They only exist as reflections of him." A wounded Keith Richards: "He used to be a lot warmer. He put himself in the fridge."

But the reader can't hope to understand Jagger or his band without an insight into the songwriting – you know, that eccentric thing musicians do when they're not bedding leggy lovelies. It's clear when Andersen glibly sums up the complex, self-questioning Street Fighting Man as an "anthem for placard-waving, rock-throwing demonstrators from Berkeley to Paris" that the substance of Jagger's lyrics is of no interest to him.

A book about a singer that pays no attention to his songs is simply an anthology of gossip, albeit juicy, unusually well-researched gossip. It ends up presenting the man whose idiosyncratic genius helped define rock stardom for half a century as little more than a superannuated sexual predator with a shrewd investment portfolio. Many of the harsh things people say about Jagger in these pages may indeed be true, but he deserves better than this.

[www.guardian.co.uk]

Well, I don't think I'll be reading that one.

Pretty fair review from the Guardian.

Andersen's initial promise to reveal a "mind-spinning tangle of contradictions" never materialises. Brick by brick, he builds an impermeable impression of a ruthless, controlling, disingenuous narcissist.

I kind of disagree with this -

>>Every interviewee speaks in neat, damning soundbites. Former publicist Keith Altham: "He doesn't have much loyalty. People come and go swiftly, and are decimated."

I can think of a number of people who Mick has been friends with for decades - a famous Indian cricketer whose name escapes me, Christopher Gibbs, the late Princess Maragaret, his PA Alan Dunn, Charlie.

NO STONE UNTURNED: Philip Norman's biography paints both sides of Mick Jagger

by PIERS PLOWRIGHT

Philip Norman had wanted to call his biography of Mick Jagger – out next month – “Satan From Suburbia”, but it didn’t make the cut. Maybe his publishers feared exile to the Occult or Fantasy sections.

Actually it’s a very good description of Michael Philip Jagger’s transformation from nice middle-class Kent boy and LSE student to wild-eyed, pouty-lip, fallen angel, fronting Britain’s bad boys, The Rolling Stones. Advice from his manager, early in his career, did the trick: “If you pretend to be wicked, you’ll get rich.”

Mick Jagger is Norman’s ninth rock biography, after brilliant and often controversial treatments of – among others – The Beatles, Elton John, Buddy Holly, John Lennon (which led to a big, not-yet-healed rift with Yoko Ono) and, of course, The Stones.

This new book he describes as “a full-length portrait” of Mick the Lips after the earlier “charcoal sketches” and in some ways Jagger is the hardest rock star to get right. This is because he deliberately obliterates his history – “He pretends not to have a past”, as Norman puts it. Rather like Horace Skimpole in Dickens’ Bleak House, he skips away from any attempt to make him take moral or social responsibility for his life.

And, anyway, who is the real Mick Jagger? The strutting, snarling rock star? The man who got a quarter of a million people to listen in silence in Hyde Park to him reading Shelley’s “Adonais” in tribute to Brian Jones? The subtle lyricist of Sympathy for the Devil which Norman considers one of the epic pop singles to be ranked alongside Lennon and McCartney’s A Day in the Life, Dylan’s Tangled Up in Blue and The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations? Or the social snob, revelling in his knighthood and invitations to aristocratic houses? All of these and more. Which makes him a fascinating subject for Philip Norman.

“Can you imagine the tedium,” he says on a rainy morning, looking out of the window of his Hampstead house, “of writing conventional rock theology: what hits when, changes in personnel, yet another tour, when this single went to No1 etc. etc?”

What interests Norman is the music and what it tells us about the people who make it. Getting behind the publicity machines to the real stories. He’s not afraid to stick his neck out in public and tells me a lovely story of disrupting a bland Barry White Q&A session with something like: “Mr White, let’s face it, your music runs the full range from A to B flat, what else can you do?” Afterwards, White came over to him, looming above the gadfly critic and rumbled, after a dangerous pause: “Really creative questions.”

Rock biographer was not Norman’s first career choice – “No job for a grown-up”, he calls it. In 1983 he was named one of the 20 Best Young British Novelists by the Sunday Times; his published journalism runs to three collections – early in his career he interviewed everybody from Richard Burton (via Colonel Gaddafi) to PG Wodehouse; and his hugely entertaining memoir Babycham Night is all about his childhood on the Isle of Wight, helping his unpredictable father run the Seagull Ballroom on Ryde Pier.

His latest novel, due out next year, is a love story called When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman.

“Nothing,” he says about it, “is what it seems”, which seems true too of his latest rock biog. “Expect some revelations,” he says at the front door. “Like who really betrayed Mick and Keith to the cops in 1967. It definitely wasn’t the News of the World”.

[www.camdennewjournal.com]

From the publisher

Author Phillip Norman, whose previous bestseller, John Lennon: The Life, was praised as a “haunting, mammoth, terrific piece of work” (New York Times Book Review) and whose classic Shout! is widely considered to be the definitive biography of the Beatles, now turns his attention to the iconic front man of the Rolling Stones, “the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world.” Norman’s Mick Jagger is an extraordinarily detailed and vibrantly written in-depth account of the life and half-century-long career of one of the most fascinating and complex superstars of rock music—the most comprehensive biography to date of the famously enigmatic musician. Keith Richards had his say in Life. Now it’s time to get to know intimately the other half of the duo responsible for such enduring hits as “Paint It Black,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Gimme Shelter,” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Mick Jagger is a must read for Stones fans, and everyone who can’t get enough of the serious memoirs and biographies of popular musicians, like Patti Smith’s Just Kids, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? by Steven Tyler, and the Warren Zevon story, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead.

Book Description
A supreme achiever to whom his colossal achievements seem to mean nothing . . .

A supreme extrovert who prefers discretion . . .

A supreme egotist who dislikes talking about himself . . .

Philip Norman has long towered above other rock biographers with his definitive studies of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Elton John, Buddy Holly, and John Lennon—legends whom the world thought it knew, but who came to life as never before through the meticulousness of Norman's research, the sweep of his cultural knowledge, and the brilliance of his writing.

Now Norman turns to a rock icon who is the most notorious yet enigmatic of them all. Throughout five decades of fronting the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger has been seen as the ultimate arrogant, narcissistic superstar, whose sexual appetite and cavalier treatment of women rival Casanova's and whose supposed reckless drug use touched off the most famous scandal in rock history. Now a grandfather nearing seventy and a British knight of the realm, he still creates excitement at the mere mention of his name; still remains the model for every young rock singer who ever takes the stage.

Norman shows Jagger to be a character far more complex than the cold archseducer of myth: human, vulnerable, often impressive, sometimes endearing. Here at last is the real story of how the Stones' brilliant first manager, Andrew Oldham, transformed a shy economics student named Mike Jagger into a modern Antichrist...of Jagger's vicious show trial and imprisonment on minuscule drug charges in 1967...his remarkable feat at the Stones' Hyde Park concert in making a quarter of a million people keep quiet and listen to poetry...his unpublicized heroic role at the Altamont festival that brought the sunny sixties to a horrific end...the cavalcade of beautiful women from Chrissie Shrimpton to Jerry Hall, whom he has bedded but not always dominated...the enduring but ever-fraught partnership with his "Glimmer Twin," Keith Richards.

While playful about some aspects of Sir Mick, Norman gives him long overdue credit as a songwriter, whose "Sympathy for the Devil" is one of the few truly epic pop singles, and as a harmonica player fit to rank among the great blues masters who inspired the Stones before money became their raison d'etre.

Mick Jagger, above all, explores the keen and calculating intelligence that has kept the Stones on their plinth as "the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band" for half a century.




here's a preview of the book at the publisher’s website. [www.harpercollins.com]

Wow! Can't wait for this one, thanks proudmary.

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latebloomer
Wow! Can't wait for this one, thanks proudmary.

I hope this book will be a real biography, not tabloid crap.
Although it should be noted that - if you read the author's preface - he is not free from bias.

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proudmary

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latebloomer
Wow! Can't wait for this one, thanks proudmary.

I hope this book will be a real biography, not tabloid crap.
Although it should be noted that - if you read the author's preface - he is not free from bias.

Noted.
Thanks for all this information proudmary!

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proudmary

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latebloomer
Wow! Can't wait for this one, thanks proudmary.

I hope this book will be a real biography, not tabloid crap.
Although it should be noted that - if you read the author's preface - he is not free from bias.

I skimmed through the preview (thanks for the link proudmary) and, while it looks ten times better than Andersen's book, there are some things he gets wrong. Like the story of Keith taking over the cherry picker at a concert, hasn't that been debunked?

Excerpt from Philip Norman's book, an interview with Chrissie Shrimpton -

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE review of Philip Norman book:

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Title5Take1

Thanks,Title5Take1
I liked this statement - "fashionable tendency to disparage Jagger by elevating Richards into the ideal of rock'n'roll credibility"
It's about time that some rock writers began to recognize this trend. I recall A. Decurtis' articles about Stones - he himself very much indulged to this in the past

Review: 'Mick Jagger' by Philip Norman

Philip Norman’s biography The Stones first appeared way, way back in 1984. Nearly thirty years later, it’s still one of the better examinations of the definitive Rock & Roll band, but it’s one that requires a good deal of support from other sources. Victor Bockris’s Keith Richards—and to a degree, the guitarist’s own factually questionable Life—are essential in gaining incite into Keef’s unique modus operandi. Bill Wyman’s Stone Alone is an important glimpse into the lot of an eternal sideman in Rock & Roll’s biggest circus, as well as a handy document of facts, figures, and errr, sexual conquests. Elliott’s Complete Recording Sessions and Karnbach and Bernson’s It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll are important references about the band’s work, even though the two books’ details often clash. Meanwhile, you’ll find no better history of Mick and Keith’s 1967 bust than Simon Wells’s Butterfly on a Wheel.

Maybe someday we’ll really get a complete, accurate, all-inclusive book about The Rolling Stones (assuming such a tome wouldn’t be so massive that perusing it would guarantee hernia). Until then, we’ll just have to keep piecing their story together from multiple sources. Decades after he published The Stones, Philip Norman has now provided another important piece in the band’s biographical jigsaw puzzle. Mick Jagger is a 600-page study of that most high-profile yet oddly private Stone.

As Norman delights in reminding us, Mick’s autobiography is among the most sought-after items in the publishing world. However, the singer’s own declared abhorrence of “rummag[ing] through [his] past” means that slot in the puzzle will forever remain empty. Norman’s book suggests that Mick’s reluctance does not merely hinge on the fact that such rummaging would have to touch on the least savory chapters in an infamous life: his ongoing, generation-spanning womanizing; his need to question the paternity of some of the kids he sired, no matter how big their lips may be; his stinginess. Granddaddy Lucifer would probably be just as embarrassed by the details that contradict the nasty image he’s been cultivating for fifty years: his stealth philanthropy and his insecurity and his tendency to take nearly as much abuse from the women in his life as he is known to dole out.

Mick Jagger naturally covers a lot of the same territory as The Stones, so it is not an ideal supplement for the less obsessed fan who has already read the earlier book. Norman makes some errors (Paul McCartney starred in The Rutles? Bill Wyman didn’t receive credit for “In Another Land” on the first edition of Satanic Majesties? My copy of the record says otherwise) that may call into question the credibility of his grander assertions. Some of his writing quirks get tiresome real fast, such as his insistence on spelling Jagger’s lyrics phonetically (“Ah was bawn in a crawss-fire hurr’cayne…”), his overly labored analogy between manager Andrew Oldham/Jagger and Svengali/Trilby, and his incessant, tasteless references to the “Mars Bar” myth. The little space Norman devotes to Mick’s music is often tainted by baffling misinterpretation (“Satisfaction” is about masturbation and menstruation? The phrase “get off of my cloud” means “look but don’t touch”? Funny, I always thought it meant “@#$%& off”) or harping criticism (I could have done without the constant declarations of how awful he thinks Satanic Majesties is).

Mick Jagger has its issues, but there’s enough information on its pages to fascinate fans, and perhaps, even force the Jagger-adverse to rethink him a bit: his kindness to Keith’s son Marlon, his charitable work alongside Bianca in Nicaragua, his tendency to get slapped around more often than Pete Campbell from “Mad Men”. Jagger isn’t all good, but he ain’t all bad either: in his own words, he’s “very complicated.” While the Stones-devoted keep chasing the definitive story of their favorite band, another piece of the puzzle falls into place.