Mick - The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger

Mick - The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger

Christopher Anderson
Gallery Books

Perhaps the first clue to the contents of this expanded tabloid article by Christopher Andersen is the absence of the log-rolling praise from fellow authors that are traditionally plastered all over the dust jackets of books in this genre.

The second clue would have been the cover itself, a blatant rip-off of the design used in Charles R. Cross's 2005 biography of Jimi Hendrix, Room Full of Mirrors; the off-centre, black-and-white close up of the subject's face.

Purported to be "explosive and riveting – the definitive biography of a living legend who has kept us thrilled, confounded and astounded", Mick is, in fact, a salacious and titillating concoction of unattributed quotes, repetitive quotes, and quotes taken directly from Keith Richards autobiography, Life.

Andersen seems to be the new Kitty Kelley, having written – according to the blurb on the jacket – biographies of Princess Diana, Jack and Jackie Kennedy, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Madonna, John F. Kennedy Jr., Barbra Streisand, Prince William and Kate Middleton, and a previous Mick Jagger biography in 1993.

Mick spends an inordinate amount of time and space describing Jagger's bisexuality, providing lurid (if true) details about his sexual liaisons with an endless parade of men and women of all races, creeds, colours and genders. In fact, it occurs to me that every description of the book's contents should be preceded by those two words, so that's what I'll do.

(If true) Mick Jagger is an unrepentant sex addict who compulsively seduces the wives and daughters of friends and colleagues without a twitch of morality.

(If true) Anita Pallenberg hated Bianca Jagger and believed the Nicaraguan Jagger-look-alike had once been a man and spent $50,000 trying to prove it.

(If true) Jagger, David Bowie and Bette Midler had a ménage-a-trois in the bedroom of a suite at the Plaza Hotel after Bowie's Madison Square Garden show during the Diamond Dogs tour (Bette Midler? Really?)

The list of "if true" moments goes on and on.

Andersen contends that Bowie (whose real surname is Jones) chose Bowie as his last name because it was a knife, similar to Jagger being a form of knife.

Andersen quotes Mackenzie Phillips, daughter of John Phillips of the Mamas and Papas, about her affair with Jagger when she turned 18: "Mick is many things but he's not a pervert. When he said he'd been waiting for me, he meant he'd been waiting for me to be legal. He slept with me as a woman. And it was wonderful." If you can believe that.

Andersen details Jagger's affairs with Angelina Jolie, Carla Bruni, Jerry Hall and countless others, which – again, if true – only serves to point out that most of these women have no qualms about being handed around like so many slabs of sirloin and, in fact, seem to revel in using famous men as stepping stones for their own careers. And these stories, if true, also show Mick Jagger to be almost sociopathically self-absorbed.

It becomes interesting then to realize that if Jagger has any conscience at all it is probably Keith Richards. And if a drug-addled, self-abusing guitar player – regardless of his skill – is your conscience, just imagine what kind of state your life must be in.

But, as Noah Cross said to Jake Gittes in Chinatown, "Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough." He could had added "rock stars" to that list.

In his 'acknowledgements' at the end of the book, Andersen notes that he probably began formulating this book back in 1969 when, writing for Time Magazine, he covered the infamous Altamont concert. Then, as a 'senior editor' at People Magazine, he covered the Studio 54 years and Jagger's 2003 investiture as a knight. He writes that a 'tremendous amount of research is essential to any comprehensive biography" and goes on to list the interviews he has conducted over the years, withholding the names of those who don't want to be quoted publicly. This is all well and good, but the end result – with its duplicated quotes and non-sequiturs and un-attributed claims – feels like a cheap tell-all.

I should mention here that, while I reviewed Keith Richards book, Life, favourably on this site a while back, I have changed my mind. Why? Because I read, at the urging of a friend, Greil Marcus's review of it in the Los Angeles Review of Books.