Here's a review of the new Mick Jagger biography, JAGGER
Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue, from the NY Times

NYT Jagger Review

Sounds like a serious dud. Thanks but I'll wait for it to hit the $1.98 remainder table at the book store. Should only take a couple of months.

Excellent review. Janet Maslin used to be rock reviewer and sometimes, but not always, she comes through.

I have this book on request at the library. Perfect for a rainy afternoon and a lot of laughs.

Spitz is a good writer and I wonder why he discredits himself writing about Jagger, whom I don't believe he ever was around. He'd be fun to have on IORR doncha think? I'd like to see him post in the Sons of Beatles thread (will it ever end?"

Will there be a couple chapters on the Super Heavy era?

Good review. It looks like someone is finally going to try to provide a aesthetic counterpoint to Keith.

A funny and witty review. But a defense of Mick is not needed. As far as I can recall - and it's a long way - Mick has never sought to ingratiate himself or even explain himself to the public. You can take him as you find him, or take him or leave him, as you choose.

A much better accolade to Mick is Ron Rosenberg's paean to his songwriting skills. I posted it once here, but can no longer find it, either here or online. If someone can help out, it is an excellent read.

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Bliss
A funny and witty review. But a defense of Mick is not needed. As far as I can recall - and it's a long way - Mick has never sought to ingratiate himself or even explain himself to the public. You can take him as you find him, or take him or leave him, as you choose.

A much better accolade to Mick is Ron Rosenberg's paean to his songwriting skills. I posted it once here, but can no longer find it, either here or online. If someone can help out, it is an excellent read.

I actually agree Bliss. I'd rather a critical analysis, but a serious, fair one. Jagger has - in spite of his public persona and the countless cheap bios and memoirs by those associated with him - managed to maintain a level of elusiveness, mysteriousness. No one really quite knows who he really is....and I like that. But Spitz' take seems at least not as salacious. We shall see. You're right, Jagger doesn't have to reveal himself and we really don't need a 'defense', but if the public has to have another book, this seems less tacky than most.

Hey, SG2! Long time no see!

Personally, I don't find Mick mysterious at all. You can judge him by his choices and what he produces. He has also been relatively candid at times in interviews. Read 'Off the Record' by Mark Paytress.

He's a musician, composer, businessman, bon viveur, father, and (former?) sex addict. His longterm interests include fitness, film production, history and cricket.

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Bliss
Hey, SG2! Long time no see!

He's a musician, composer, businessman, bon viveur, father, and (former?) sex addict. His longterm interests include fitness, film production, history and cricket.

Hola! Yes, that's the definitive bio for Mick isn't it. Everything else is whatever we want him to be.

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Baxter Thwaites
Will there be a couple chapters on the Super Heavy era?

BT , why the infactuation with SH? Are they really working for your ears? I think SH is Jagger's last intentional chance to piss Keith off over his loose lips concerning Jaggers slimy record contract negotiations , piggy backing his solo deals in with the Stones new contract. I would love to see a Jagger SOLO show, let's see what he's got in him with just his own guitar, piano, whateva to back him up. That would be awesome and I'll bet he could pull it off and blow ALL the remaining Stones away. Jagger seems too calculated to include anything from the SH era (just in case it falls on it's face). Time will tell. peace.

There's an excerpt here

[www.nytimes.com]

Mick Jagger having a dck smaller than John Lennon?!?
Could this REALLY be true!?!

Imagining the Rolling Stones Without Keith Richards
By BEN RATLIFF

[artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com]
Today in The New York Times Janet Maslin reviews Marc Spitz’s new book, “Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue.” She liked the book, and so do I. It argues against the prevailing and increasingly boring theory that Keith Richards is the Stones’ main claim to authenticity, the soul of the band, the principal force of their sound and songcraft, and that Mick Jagger is a shallow socialite poseur. If you were persuaded by Keith Richards’ strong attitudes in his memoir, “Life” — which has sold a million copies worldwide in under a year, according to a recent statement by its American publisher — you may believe in this theory yourself.

I understand that Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards have been writing songs together since 1964. I like the way Mr. Richards has worked with the other guitarists in the Stones, and I like that when their gigs are flagging he turns his back on the audience, places himself in front of Charlie Watts’s bass drum and bears down on the groove. But sometimes I imagine a fantasy version of the Stones in which Keith Richards is not a member.

Mr. Spitz’s book doesn’t go too far into it, but there are a number of Stones songs allegedly written entirely — words and music — by Mick Jagger alone, or with other people who are not Keith Richards, or with minimal input from Keith Richards. They are not trifles: they’re among the Stones’ greatest, an alternate canon.

For amusement, here’s at least a partial list, an album’s worth.

Much of the information comes from Jann Wenner’s interview with Mr. Jagger, published in Rolling Stone in 1995. Other sources include Mr. Richards’ Life; a 2001 book of interviews with the band members, compiled by Dora Loewenstein and Philip Dodd, called “According to the Rolling Stones”; timeisonourside.com, which compiles various band members’ public comments about every track the Stones recorded; and the database compiled by the Swiss researcher Felix Aeppli, online at aeppli.ch.

“Yesterday’s Papers” (Mr. Jagger, in Wenner interview: “The first song I ever wrote completely on my own for a Rolling Stones record.”)
“Sympathy for the Devil” (Wenner interview: Mr. Jagger asserts that he wrote it himself, and Mr. Richards suggested it be played in “another rhythm.”)
“Street Fighting Man” (Wenner interview: “I wrote a lot of the melody and all the words, and Keith and I sat around and made this wonderful track…”)
“Brown Sugar” (Wenner interview: Mr. Jagger asserts that he wrote it all.)
“Moonlight Mile” and “Sway” (Wenner interview: Mr. Jagger asserts that he wrote both with the guitarist Mick Taylor; in Life, p. 283, Mr. Richards concedes that “Moonlight Mile was all Mick [Jagger]’s.”)
“Star Star” and “100 Years Ago” (according to Mr. Taylor’s and Mr. Richards’ comments quoted at timeisonourside.com)
“It’s Only Rock and Roll” (“Life,” p. 369)
“Miss You” (Wenner interview: Mr. Jagger asserts he wrote it with Billy Preston)
“Some Girls,” “Respectable,” “Lies,” “When the Whip Comes Down” (Wenner interview)
“Emotional Rescue” (written mostly by Mr. Jagger with Charlie Watts and Ron Wood, according to timeisonourside.com)

I will probally read the book until it gets to the part in his life , where he accepts that pompous knighthood, as that is when I lost alot of respect for Mr. Jagger,,,


" JUST SAY NO TO KNIGHTHOOD "

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Bliss
A funny and witty review. But a defense of Mick is not needed. As far as I can recall - and it's a long way - Mick has never sought to ingratiate himself or even explain himself to the public. You can take him as you find him, or take him or leave him, as you choose.

A much better accolade to Mick is Ron Rosenberg's paean to his songwriting skills. I posted it once here, but can no longer find it, either here or online. If someone can help out, it is an excellent read.

The New York Oberver article by Rob Rosenbaum is below. Jagger, to me is the only 60's artist that is still "interesting". I don't however find jagger mysterious at all. Rob Rosenbaum's description of Jagger as an aristo-poet and Spitz's comment about Jagger’s quest for a high-low aesthetic pretty much sum it all up.
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Mick Jagger: Our Most Underrated Songwriter?
By Ron Rosenbaum 12/10/01 12:00am

I learned about George Harrison after a draft of this column went to the copy editors. Reading the many well-deserved tributes he’s getting now made me feel even more strongly the importance of paying tribute to artists while they’re still with us rather than waiting for death to provide a “peg.” It’s one of the things I’ve tried to do since I began The Edgy Enthusiast, and you can think of this Mick Jagger tribute in that light.

Recently I came upon a startling remark by Stephen Booth, a brilliant literary scholar who occupies a special place in my pantheon for his transformative edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets. (His Yale University Press commentary on the sonnets is an exhilarating exercise in polysemous pleasure–which is not as dirty as it sounds.)

Anyway, I’d been tracking down some of Mr. Booth’s other essays in places like Pacific Coast Philology when I came upon that remarkable opening line from one of his essays: “Shakespeare is, of course, our most underrated poet.” Shakespeare underrated ?

In a tongue-in-cheek kind of way, Mr. Booth is saying that all the millions and perhaps billions of words expended on Shakespeare’s poetry have still not come close to justly rating his immensity. So he’s underrated! In that spirit, I would like to argue that Mick Jagger is our most underrated songwriter. Despite the millions and millions of words expended on Mick Jagger’s rock-star persona, on the mansions and the babes and the paternity suits and the Tootsie Roll soaked in acid on the tour plane (or was that Led Zeppelin?), despite–or because of–the millions and millions of words about Mick Jagger the celebrity , no one has done justice to Mick Jagger as a writer . A writer of brilliant, soulful, soaring, incantatory anthems, hymns to broken hearts (“Memory Motel”), broken spirits (“Wild Horses”) and fragmentary hopes for redemption (the incomparable “Sweet Virginia”). And let’s not forget, at this particular moment, that he’s one of the rare rock songwriters who has addressed the question of evil and apocalypse (“Sympathy for the Devil,” “Gimme Shelter”) in a sophisticated way.

He’s more well-known for his “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” manic-exhibitionist stage persona, but he’s done some killer slow, aching ballads, such as “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and “Angie” and “Time Waits for No One.”

He’s been doing it from the beginning of his songwriting career, with underappreciated slow-tempo numbers like “Blue Turns to Grey,” “The Singer Not the Song” and one of my all-time, all-time faves, “Tell Me (You’re Coming Back to Me).”

That’s the one where I think he first discovered the power of incantatory repetition that transforms simple love songs into soaring sonic prayers in the gutter religion of love. Sometimes it’s the despairing prayer of a Graham Greene whiskey priest, as in the almost completely overlooked “Till the Next Good Bye.” Sometimes it’s the bleak beauty, the spare Beckett-like eloquence of “No Expectations.” He’s got another potential classic in the anthemic “Wild Horses” mode on his new solo album, Goddess in the Doorway –a song called “Don’t Call Me Up.” But that’s not what prompted this column, or even my call to radio guru Jonathan Schwartz.

No, what prompted me to call Mr. Schwartz was the dispiriting news that I first read in Page Six, that Mick Jagger’s new solo album only sold a paltry 900 copies in its first week of release in the U.K.! This despite a prime-time network documentary (ABC’s Being Mick Jagger ) about his living the high life, hobnobbing with Prince Charles at the royal premiere of the film he’s just produced ( Enigma , starring Kate Winslet), and making music with the many children of his several wives.

I say “despite” the prime-time documentary, but maybe because of it–because, again, it played into the image that people have always used to underrate him, to write him off as a jet-setting celeb these days, rather than the serious artist he was and still is.

This jet-set stuff obscures the fact that Mick Jagger has written powerful songs that will last forever (the unbearably sad and beautiful “Memory Motel” will last as long as memory–or at least as long as motels).

But before I go any further, I think it’s important to say that when I say “Mick Jagger has written,” I mean the songs that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have written. Most of them are written for Mr. Jagger’s voice , for his persona. But I have a feeling that the writing credit “Jagger/Richards” represents a real collaboration, whatever the division of labor may be.*

Actually, I’d love to know how Mick and Keith work together as a team. (My fantasy is to do one of those Paris Review “Writers at Work” interviews with them.)

But when I say Mick Jagger is our most underrated songwriter, I also believe he’s our most underrated voice. A voice–and a delivery–that deserves comparison, by this time, with Frank Sinatra, Count Basie, Bob Dylan and Neil Young as one of the defining male voices of the century.

Yes: Jagger and Sinatra. That’s why I felt compelled to put in a call to my friend Jonathan Schwartz, an elegant advocate for Sinatra, Bennett, all those guys, but someone who also has a deep understanding of Dylan. I’ve had some of my most illuminating Dylan conversations with Jonathan, and yet I couldn’t recall any real conversation about the Stones.

Jonathan Schwartz, as I’m sure you know, is the gifted novelist, memoirist and host of two widely admired Saturday and Sunday afternoon music-and-meditative- monologue shows on WNYC. When I reached him, he told me he was about to send me news of an additional gig as on-air producer and programmer on a singer-songwriter channel of the new no-commercials satellite-radio service XM, where, he said, they allow him the freedom to play “deep tracks”– overlooked classics by his favorites, such as (in the order he reeled them off) Lena Horne, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett and that other guy he likes so much, Frank whatever.

I felt that Jonathan might be the one person who could redress the imbalance in Mick Jagger’s reputation, repair the underestimation of Mr. Jagger as a songwriter.

I was ready to say, “See here, Jonathan, you’re one of the few people who has the perspicuity to appreciate both that Frank guy and Bob Dylan. It’s time you did the same for Mick Jagger’s songs.”

But before I got two sentences into my prepared rant, Jonathan stopped me to say that, in fact, he has played Jagger on his mostly Sinatra and Tony Bennett show.

He told me how he segued recently from a conga riff at the end of “Sympathy for the Devil” into Mel Tormé’s “I Don’t Want to Cry Anymore” in a way that perfectly “married the two genres of music,” as he put it.

And then he cited several other Jagger songs he’d played, including some of those classic anthemic ballads that are my favorites as well, among them “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Wild Horses” and “Angie.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised at Jonathan’s discernment. We went on after that to consider the relationship between Jagger and Dylan as songwriters. Was Jagger, as Jonathan initially suggested, “a blue-collar Dylan”?

I put it differently: Mick Jagger’s audience might have been more authentically blue-collar, in the sense that Bob Dylan’s initial audience bought their blue work shirts at the Harvard Co-op, so to speak. But Mick Jagger’s songwriting was anything but blue-collar, even when–Jonathan had a point here–portraying blue-collar kids in “Satisfaction” and “Street Fighting Man.”

Mick Jagger, I argued, was more of an aesthete in the sense that his art–or part of his art–was not to call attention to his art. Not to call attention the way Dylan did, with over-the-top verbal pyrotechnics, at least until Dylan shifted into a new, more pared-down mode of songwriting with Blood on the Tracks –not necessarily better, perhaps, or as novel as the Highway 61-Blonde on Blonde Dylan, but very, well, Jaggeresque. (I await the sensitively written Ph.D. thesis comparing “Gimme Shelter” with “Shelter from the Storm.”)

Meanwhile, though, Mick Jagger–always a peacock on stage–was, in his ballads, more in the mode (or the pose) of the aristo-poet than the blue-collar rocker. At his unaffected best, Jagger can display flashes of the tossed-off brilliance of Byron.

But there’s something else about Jagger that defines him as a songwriter, defines him as a singer–something that doesn’t necessarily appear on a lyric sheet. It’s his beautiful use of incantation.

Incantation : a lovely word for a special kind of vocal recurrence, one that combines overtones of prayer, magic, spell casting, all that.

Incantation: It’s a kind of vocal voodoo that has almost completely overcome the genius of Van Morrison, so that sometimes you feel he’s only about incantation.

Ecstatic incantation: It’s what defines rock music against the “standards” given such knee-jerk reverence by young fogies and old. (Well, maybe that and the Little Richard-like, ecstatic ” Whooo-oooo! ” that made the Beatles the Beatles.)

But what made the Stones the Stones is Jagger’s jagged-edge incantation.

No one does more with the incantation of a first line–a focused incantation–than Jagger. It’s there in the beautiful, desperate, hopeless urgency of “Tell Me (You’re Comin’ Back to Me).” And in the way it’s not just “Wild Horses” but “Wild, wild horses.” And then there’s the amazing apocalyptic couplet that fades to infinity in “Gimme Shelter”:

War …it’s just a shot away, shot away, shot away

Love …it’s just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away….

(By the way, has anyone ever compressed a deeper truth about human nature in two lines of a song?)

It’s not “You’re just a memory,” but “You’re just a memory, just a memory, just a memory” in “Memory Motel.” Each incantatory reiteration of “memory” conjuring up a very real ghost, rather than consigning the unquiet spirit to the memory hole–which is the ostensible declarative intent of the song.

So many Jagger/Richards songs deal with time (and, implicitly, memory), don’t they? “Time Is on My Side” (“Time, time, TIME / Is on my side … yes it is”), “Good Times, Bad Times,” “Out of Time,” “This Could Be the Last Time” ….

I’ve celebrated before the brilliant visionary metaphysics of “Time Waits for No One,” with Mick Taylor’s guitar somehow spilling out a vision of beauty and complexity that virtually translates Stephen Hawking’s theory of “imaginary time” into guitar runs. String theory!

Recently, I came across an extraordinary phrase in a poem by Robert Lowell:

We are all old-timers,

Each of us holds a locked razor.

I found it in the foreword of the fascinating book I’d just picked up, Gracefully Insane (by the Boston Globe writer Alex Beam). It’s about McLean’s, that remarkable institution right outside Boston where some of the best and brightest madmen and madwomen, from Lowell to Sylvia Plath to Susanna Kaysen, were resident–some recurrently, like Lowell.

In a section of “Waking in the Blue,” Lowell talks about waking up there and then glimpsing the “shaky future grow familiar” in those who were older and had been there longer–and more often. Thus:

We are all old-timers,

Each of us holds a locked razor .

For Lowell, the “locked razor” suggests mortality, insanity. In the songs of Mick Jagger, the “locked razor” is the heart, a ticking time bomb–the locked razor whose jagged edge scars when it opens.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2011-09-01 16:52 by wanderingspirit66.

wanderingspirit66, thanks for posting. Fantastic article!
but unfortunately it's a voice in the wilderness. Jagger's perception as a "shallow, greedy socialite poseur", 10 years after this article didn't change.
I think it's basically Richards' negativity that led to de-legitimization of Jagger as creative artist

Yeah, Rosenbaum knows his stuff. "Time is on my Side" is one of the great Jagger/Richards compositions. Jerry Ragovoy might beg to differ.

Well, some interesting 'semi-academical' readings... nice try to catch 'rock&roll' into words....

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WilliamPatrickMaynard
Yeah, Rosenbaum knows his stuff. "Time is on my Side" is one of the great Jagger/Richards compositions. Jerry Ragovoy might beg to differ.

From Wikipedia
"Time Is on My Side" is a song written by Jerry Ragovoy (under the pseudonym of Norman Meade). First recorded by jazz trombonist Kai Winding and his Orchestra in 1963, it was covered (with additional lyrics by Jimmy Norman) by both soul singer Irma Thomas and The Rolling Stones in 1964.

and yes - that's their great song.

Thanks for posting. I just placed a "hold" on my library's copy.

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Roscoe

Jeez, this article should have come with a warning to put your boots on first. It's quite a deep slog getting through this. Just more lame over analyzing from a pseudo-intellectual. Remember gang, it's JUST rock'n'roll.

agree this writer just loves listening to his voice (on paper). The only kinda 1/2 truth of the article was about the lyrics:

War …it’s just a shot away, shot away, shot away

Love …it’s just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away….

(By the way, has anyone ever compressed a deeper truth about human nature in two lines of a song?)

Probably not but still only 1/2 truth because how many people are really comparing any two lines of lyrics to any other two in search of understanding of human nature...intellectual BS.
peace.

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Naturalust

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Roscoe

Jeez, this article should have come with a warning to put your boots on first. It's quite a deep slog getting through this. Just more lame over analyzing from a pseudo-intellectual. Remember gang, it's JUST rock'n'roll.

agree this writer just loves listening to his voice (on paper). The only kinda 1/2 truth of the article was about the lyrics:

War …it’s just a shot away, shot away, shot away

Love …it’s just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away….

(By the way, has anyone ever compressed a deeper truth about human nature in two lines of a song?)

Probably not but still only 1/2 truth because how many people are really comparing any two lines of lyrics to any other two in search of understanding of human nature...intellectual BS.
peace.

The word "intellectual" doesn't sound a curse to everyone
There are those who like to think and share their thoughts.
I would like to understand why laudatory article about Jagger, which does not diminish the value of Richards, so irritated some of his fans.
Does any word of praise for Jagger piss you off?

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proudmary

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Naturalust

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Roscoe

Jeez, this article should have come with a warning to put your boots on first. It's quite a deep slog getting through this. Just more lame over analyzing from a pseudo-intellectual. Remember gang, it's JUST rock'n'roll.

agree this writer just loves listening to his voice (on paper). The only kinda 1/2 truth of the article was about the lyrics:

War …it’s just a shot away, shot away, shot away

Love …it’s just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away….

(By the way, has anyone ever compressed a deeper truth about human nature in two lines of a song?)

Probably not but still only 1/2 truth because how many people are really comparing any two lines of lyrics to any other two in search of understanding of human nature...intellectual BS.
peace.

The word "intellectual" doesn't sound a curse to everyone
There are those who like to think and share their thoughts.
I would like to understand why laudatory article about Jagger, which does not diminish the value of Richards, so irritated some of his fans.
Does any word of praise for Jagger piss you off?

No, I love MJ. He is an awesome songwriter and performer. Cool as they come. Hell I wanted to BE MJ for several years in my youth. But that article was just too dry, from a wierd perspective and basically a dud. I like to think as much as the next ant in the pile but tell me proudmary, have you ever really looked at the lyrics, compared them to other lyrics and been knowledgeable enough to make a statement like "none better compressed to reveal the truth about human nature" , if you have, you are way more intellectual than me, and my parents are both professors at major universities. I won't talk about the 9 years I spent in higher education. peace.

I'm not sure "Street Fighting Man" is a song with minimal inpute from Keith Richards. I believe Keith came up with the chords and some of the melody. I also believe Keith started that song. I think all Jagger's saying a is he wrote the words and a lot of melody.

I'm not sure that many of the songs listed as written entirely by Mick Jagger are important songs. I can't see Keith worrying about the true authorship of yesterday's Papers.

There are many opinions of Moonlight Mile and many contradictions on the authorship of that song. Iorr was written by Wood, Bowi and jagger.

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proudmary
Imagining the Rolling Stones Without Keith Richards
By BEN RATLIFF

[artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com]
Today in The New York Times Janet Maslin reviews Marc Spitz’s new book, “Jagger: Rebel, Rock Star, Rambler, Rogue.” She liked the book, and so do I. It argues against the prevailing and increasingly boring theory that Keith Richards is the Stones’ main claim to authenticity, the soul of the band, the principal force of their sound and songcraft, and that Mick Jagger is a shallow socialite poseur. If you were persuaded by Keith Richards’ strong attitudes in his memoir, “Life” — which has sold a million copies worldwide in under a year, according to a recent statement by its American publisher — you may believe in this theory yourself.

I understand that Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards have been writing songs together since 1964. I like the way Mr. Richards has worked with the other guitarists in the Stones, and I like that when their gigs are flagging he turns his back on the audience, places himself in front of Charlie Watts’s bass drum and bears down on the groove. But sometimes I imagine a fantasy version of the Stones in which Keith Richards is not a member.

Mr. Spitz’s book doesn’t go too far into it, but there are a number of Stones songs allegedly written entirely — words and music — by Mick Jagger alone, or with other people who are not Keith Richards, or with minimal input from Keith Richards. They are not trifles: they’re among the Stones’ greatest, an alternate canon.

For amusement, here’s at least a partial list, an album’s worth.

Much of the information comes from Jann Wenner’s interview with Mr. Jagger, published in Rolling Stone in 1995. Other sources include Mr. Richards’ Life; a 2001 book of interviews with the band members, compiled by Dora Loewenstein and Philip Dodd, called “According to the Rolling Stones”; timeisonourside.com, which compiles various band members’ public comments about every track the Stones recorded; and the database compiled by the Swiss researcher Felix Aeppli, online at aeppli.ch.

“Yesterday’s Papers” (Mr. Jagger, in Wenner interview: “The first song I ever wrote completely on my own for a Rolling Stones record.”)
“Sympathy for the Devil” (Wenner interview: Mr. Jagger asserts that he wrote it himself, and Mr. Richards suggested it be played in “another rhythm.”)
“Street Fighting Man” (Wenner interview: “I wrote a lot of the melody and all the words, and Keith and I sat around and made this wonderful track…”)
“Brown Sugar” (Wenner interview: Mr. Jagger asserts that he wrote it all.)
“Moonlight Mile” and “Sway” (Wenner interview: Mr. Jagger asserts that he wrote both with the guitarist Mick Taylor; in Life, p. 283, Mr. Richards concedes that “Moonlight Mile was all Mick [Jagger]’s.”)
“Star Star” and “100 Years Ago” (according to Mr. Taylor’s and Mr. Richards’ comments quoted at timeisonourside.com)
“It’s Only Rock and Roll” (“Life,” p. 369)
“Miss You” (Wenner interview: Mr. Jagger asserts he wrote it with Billy Preston)
“Some Girls,” “Respectable,” “Lies,” “When the Whip Comes Down” (Wenner interview)
“Emotional Rescue” (written mostly by Mr. Jagger with Charlie Watts and Ron Wood, according to timeisonourside.com)

Naturalust, first of all I like this article - I find it interesting and informative for myself and I agree with what the author claims.
These two lines. Not in these exact words, but I thought something like this. it is clear that this is an observation about human nature - very lacinic and powerful. that's why i still love this song.
You're right, the tone is dry and a bit abstruse. But who wrote about Jagger better?

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proudmary
Naturalust, first of all I like this article - I find it interesting and informative for myself and I agree with what the author claims.
These two lines. Not in these exact words, but I thought something like this. it is clear that this is an observation about human nature - very lacinic and powerful. that's why i still love this song.
You're right, the tone is dry and a bit abstruse. But who wrote about Jagger better?

Well to each their own. I liked Keith's writing on Jagger in his book "Life" much better and almost anything Jan Wenner (or his staff) has written. He is a good interview too and has done many of these. The recent Larry King one isn't bad. He will be the first to tell you that the words to his songs are much less thought out and meaningful than is suggested by the author of the article. For one thing the context of the words, inside the music, dancing around rhythmically and tonally is necessary to really understand what MJ was trying to do or say. Mostly just make a good song. Reading lyrics and attaching meanings to them may be a good exercise in poetry but is kind of off the mark where songs are concerned because it is just a small piece of the overall art. peace.

New Jagger Biography?

Since when did Jagger write a biography?
He must be envious of Keith who has sold a million or more of "LIFE".

Well don't want to call that book about Jagger a biography though, it's
a book written about him. Not half as interesting as a real biography would be.

Still it won't be more interesting than Keith's book

Been Stoned since 1964 and still am!

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Naturalust

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proudmary
Naturalust, first of all I like this article - I find it interesting and informative for myself and I agree with what the author claims.
These two lines. Not in these exact words, but I thought something like this. it is clear that this is an observation about human nature - very lacinic and powerful. that's why i still love this song.
You're right, the tone is dry and a bit abstruse. But who wrote about Jagger better?

Well to each their own. I liked Keith's writing on Jagger in his book "Life" much better and almost anything Jan Wenner (or his staff) has written. He is a good interview too and has done many of these. The recent Larry King one isn't bad. He will be the first to tell you that the words to his songs are much less thought out and meaningful than is suggested by the author of the article. For one thing the context of the words, inside the music, dancing around rhythmically and tonally is necessary to really understand what MJ was trying to do or say. Mostly just make a good song. Reading lyrics and attaching meanings to them may be a good exercise in poetry but is kind of off the mark where songs are concerned because it is just a small piece of the overall art. peace.

Mick said that his lyrics are not important only in the early years. Ever since the '70s, he did not repeat anything like that. He said that this is not poetry and his lyrics can not be seen in isolation from the song - but never said the words are only needed to have something to occupy the mouth.
If you carefully read his interview you will see that he talks a lot about his lyrics and treats it very seriously.
Now that Richards wrote in his book about Jagger. aside from an occasional mention of him in the first two-thirds of the book, which does not say a single word of Jagger as a creative phenomenon, and the last third devoted entirely to how Jagger is heartless greedy meanie meanie - I have not found any material to learn about Mick Jagger as an artist.
But like you said - to each his own. You may be interested in reading about Mick's small penis or his inability to handle women. I prefer to read Wenner's interview or this article from which we can learn something about the creative process and Jagger as person.

This most definitely IS a biography. If Jagger had wrote it, it would be an autobiography.