Book: Mick Jagger by Philip Norman

This is a 600-page unauthorized biography.

Mick Jagger often says he can't remember what happened although the author doesn't exactly believe this. Therefore, the sources are drawn from what is mostly already known. Still, for anyone who liked or likes The Rolling Stones, it's fun to read, full of vignettes about Mick and sometimes Keith and Charlie, Bill and Ronnie. I don't think there is much new information here, rather a reiteration of what everyone knows: the making and writing of music/lyrics and tales of sex and drugs and money on the Stones' road to superstar status. It is interesting because of their talent and success but also because of their longevity; they are still rocking and performing after 50 years of sex and drug addictions, and not as former stars but as megastars still. Pretty amazing....luckily, the heroin, cocaine, LSD, alcohol and hundreds of one-night stands didn't destroy them. Which doesn't exactly make them heroes...but rather survivors who know how to work hard and at least periodically be somewhat disciplined. In our mostly youth-oriented popular culture, their appeal is enormous.

There are stories of Mick's lovers and wives: mainly Chrissie Shrimpton, Marianne Faithfull, Bianca Jagger and Jerry Hall ....and his seven kids who are now grown themselves and who apparently have amicable relationships with him; stories of Brian Jones and Mick Taylor, of Anita Pallenburg and the drug-soaked life she led with Keith, stories of all the musicians whose lives intersected or inspired the Stones...the bluesmen and women, the Beatles, Chicago and Chess records, Altamont, the money deals, the Redlands drug bust, the agents and handlers and the love/hate bitchiness and bickering between Keith and Mick. The book is kind of a long gossipy narrative but one that was written well enough, as it moved along the lifelines of this phenomenal band, to have kept my attention.

I got the impression that Mr. Norman didn't like his subject all that much, although in fairness, he would often describe some of Mick's mostly behind-the-scenes acts of kindness and charity and how those who met Mick for the first time were charmed by his lack of ego. I do think this book is mostly a compilation of bit and pieces of information from previously published material (although a few of the principals apparently did speak at least somewhat with the author).

As for two of Mick's ladies:
Bianca Jagger returned to her native Nicaragua in 1979 "as part of a Red Cross delegation  looking at the country's reconstruction since the 1972 earthquake...From that moment Bianca's life--hitherto about little but clothes and finding wealthy men to protect her--changed completely. Studio 54 lost its queen, and the people of her own and neighboring countries, similarly oppressed by poverty and vicious despots found a passionate, selfless advocate...Her international profile was raised still further when Nicaragua's Somoza clan was finally overthrown by the revolutionary FSLN Party, or Sandinistas, and the US government--fearing the spread of communism in Latin American--began lending covert support to a right-wing counterrevolutionary alliance known as the Contras. Bianca took part in lobbying against this policy and was a leading voice in the subsequent furor, when the Reagan administration was discovered to have secretly sold arms to Iran, its supposed archenemy, to fund the Contras. So the world finally did see a Jagger getting involved in politics and speaking out fearlessly."

And Jerry Hall comes through as a wonderfully sweet and wild Texas lady...so that at the end of the book, I liked learning about these women at least as much as the dusted-off Mick stories.

OK...so just after posting this I got in my car and headed into town and All Things Considered was on NRP.  They were interviewing each of the Stones on subsequent days this week and each was asked to pick a song. Charlie Watts came on, laughing at HIS disremembrance..."Well, I guess this isn't turning out to be a very good interview...." He had chosen Satisfaction and I realized as this song began and played throughout the few minutes Charlie was "interviewed" that the music is so the thing here....not really the often outlandish lives the Stones have led or what is written about them. Although, a full-blown Stone performance (just once for me) WAS a hell of good time.

And, just for the record, they have done several free and benefit concerts.