You can’t always get what you want, especially if that thing you want is a tell-all memoir written by a certain man named Michael Philip “Mick” Jagger. In a piece for Britain’s Spectator, publisher and rock historian John Blake has revealed that despite Jagger being vocal throughout his entire life about not having a desire to write down his extraordinary life experiences, he had, in fact, written a “75,000-word manuscript” in the early 1980s that Blake is currently in possession of. As the story goes, Jagger was approached in the 1970s to write a memoir with a massive monetary advance, but his interest gradually waned and he walked away from the project. In the 1980s, though, Jagger ultimately decided he wanted to pursue the memoir, and wrote a “pristine typescript” that has still not seen the light of day. “So far as I have been able to ascertain, a publisher rejected the manuscript because it was light on sex and drugs,” Blake explained. “In the early 1980s, when it was written, shock and awe was a vital part of any successful autobiography. Read now, however, it is a little masterpiece. A perfectly preserved time capsule written when the Stones had produced all their greatest music but still burned with the passion and fire of youth and idealism.”
Blake describes Jagger’s words as being “delicious, heady stuff,” and teases that the memoir shows “a quieter, more watchful Mick than the fast-living caricature.” Although, of course, there are some crazy anecdotes:
Mick tells of buying a historic mansion, Stargroves, while high on acid and of trying out the life of horse-riding country squire. Having never ridden a horse before, he leapt on to a stallion, whereupon it reared and roared off ‘like a Ferrari’. Summoning his wits and some half-remembered horse facts, he gave the stallion a thump on the forehead right between the eyes and slowed it down — otherwise the Stones’ story might have ended differently.
When Blake approached Jagger in recent years to discuss the potential of finally publishing the memoir, Jagger apparently “could not remember” writing it but was optimistic about getting it into the public eye. However, just like decades before, Jagger’s mind ended up changing and he “never” wants to see it published. But who knows — if Blake keeps trying, well he might just find, he’ll get what he needs.
