One Last Shot: the Mick Jagger you don't know

Mick Jagger's version of Life may never see the light of day. But to mark the release of Jagger's new biography, Philip Norman talks about a different side to the Rolling Stones frontman than the "vinyl Valentino" of lore

The great 19th-century painter James McNeill Whistler was once asked how long a certain canvas had taken him to complete. "All my life," replied Whistler. Likewise, I could be said to have worked on this biography of Mick Jagger since I first interviewed him, for a small north of England evening newspaper, in 1965.

Mick wore a white fisherman's-knit sweater, drank Pepsi-Cola from the bottle and made desultory attempts to chat up a young woman

Our conversation took place on the cold back stairs of the ABC cinema, Stockton-on-Tees, where the Stones were appearing in what used to be called a pop "package show". Mick wore a white fisherman's-knit sweater, drank Pepsi-Cola from the bottle and, between answering my questions in a not-very-interested way, made desultory attempts to chat up a young woman somewhere behind me. That one detail, at least, would never change. In the five decades since, he's seldom been out of the headlines as a sexual icon whose exploits rivalled Casanova's; whose narcissism, arrogance and treatment of women made him as unlovable as he was adulated; and whose supposed reckless drug-use touched off the most famous scandal in rock history. Now a grandfather nearing 70 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.
My biography, however, reveals a very different character from the vinyl Valentino of myth - more complex, vulnerable and often endearing. I tell 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 unpublicised 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 he has bedded but not always dominated and the enduring but ever-fraught partnership with his "Glimmer Twin", Keith Richards.
While playful about some aspects of modern Sir Mick, I give him long overdue credit as a songwriter, whose "Sympathy For The Devil" is one of few truly epic pop singles, and as a harmonica-player fit to rank among the great blues masters who first inspired the Stones. Above all, I acknowledge the keen and calculating intelligence that has kept them on their plinth as "the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band" for half a century.
Mick Jagger by Philip Norman is available now (HarperCollins, £20)