Mick Jagger By Philip Norman

Philip Norman towers above other biographers with his definitive studies of rock legends the world thought it knew, but who came to life as never before through the meticulousness of Norman's research, the sweep of his cultural knowledge, and the brilliance of his writing.

Now Norman turns to the most notorious yet enigmatic rock icon of them all. Throughout five decades of fronting the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger has been seen as the ultimate arrogant superstar, whose sexual appetite rivals Casanova's and whose supposed reckless drug use touched off the most famous scandal in rock history.

But Norman reveals a Jagger far more complex than the cold archseducer of myth: human, vulnerable, often impressive, sometimes endearing. Here at last is the real story of how a shy economics student became a modern Antichrist...of Jagger's vicious show trial and imprisonment in 1967...of his unpublicized heroic role at the horrific Altamont festival...of the beautiful women from Chrissie Shrimpton to Jerry Hall, whom he has bedded but not always dominated...of the enduring but ever-fraught partnership with his "Glimmer Twin," Keith Richards.

While playful about some aspects of Sir Mick, Norman gives him long overdue credit as a songwriter and as a musician fit to rank among the great blues masters who inspired the Stones before money became their raison d'etre. Mick Jagger, above all, explores the keen and calculating intelligence that has kept the Stones on their plinth as "the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band" for half a century.