Pursuits: Most rock stars never say anything remotely revelatory in their autobiographies

You know the world is really getting old when rock stars start writing their autobiographies; and especially when these autobiographies start outselling their most recent recordings.

That is certainly true of Keith Richards’ best-selling memoir. The book has sold so many copies that it may well turn out to be the most popular thing Keith has written in many decades.

 

 

   A new autobiography by Pete Townshend of The Who will be released this month. And though I haven’t read it, I have seen the pre-publication extracts and the hype. If the book lives up to that standard, it should give Townshend his biggest hit since Who Are You. Plus, there has been a sort-of-memoir by Elton John and a fragment of autobiography by Sting. Publishers warn us that more such books are on the way. It seems that the generation that once bought CDs and records can’t quite get the hang of this downloading thing. So, they’ve given up on the music and moved on to books.

 

   Most reviewers loved the Keith Richards book and though I am not one of those people who believes that Keith is the soul of the Rolling Stones (Brian Jones was and Mick Jagger now is) I enjoyed the book and Keith’s slightly unusual take on his own life.

 

   The problem with most rock autobiographies, however, is that the stars never say anything remotely revelatory. The only bit of fresh gossip in Keith Richards book was the revelation that he had it off with Marianne Faithfull, who was then Mick Jagger’s girlfriend. Old-timers will not regard this as hugely surprising. After all, Faithfull is the woman who gave an interview to NME, the British music paper, in the 1970s, in which she declared that she had slept with three Rolling Stones before deciding that she liked the lead singer the best. But what is astonishing is Richards’ claim that Jagger has a ‘tiny todger’, which deflates one of the great rock legends of all time.

 

   Apart from that, there is nothing terribly new in the Richards book. Similarly, when ex-Rolling Stone Bill Wyman published his autobiography a decade ago, the only interesting thing in it was his claim that he, not Jagger or Richards, was the true stud in the band, sleeping with hundreds of groupies. (Oh yes, he also wrote Jumpin’ Jack Flash, he said, but Mick and Keith wouldn’t give him a credit.)

 

   I’ve been trying to think of a rock memoir that had surprising revelations. But for the most part they tend to be as dull as David Crosby’s book (which basically says, “I was a junkie loser but now I’ve cleaned up my act so I’m just a loser”) or Eric Clapton’s memoir which deals movingly with his illegitimacy and his addiction without revealing very much that is new.

 

   Far better than rock star autobiographies are the books written by the people around them. You can say what you like about Angie Bowie, ex-wife of Ziggy Stardust, but few autobiographies can compete with her revelation that she came home one morning to find Mick Jagger in bed with her husband. (“I cooked them breakfast,” she says matter-of-factly.) And what about Marianne Faithfull’s own book in which she describes how Jagger confessed, while making love to her, that the person he would really like to do this to was Keith Richards. (Funny how Jagger and his todger turn up in everybody’s books.)

 

"Gossip has it that Mick Jagger is so annoyed by the Keith Richards book that he is reluctant to participate in a planned Rolling Stones tour."

   Similarly, the most entertaining reads about the Stones come from the hangers-on and the observers. You get a sense of what life with Keith Richards must have been like from reading Tony Sanchez’s Up And Down With The Rolling Stones; ‘Spanish’ Tony was Richards’ stooge, fixer and dealer. The most objective studies of the band come from the writer, Stanley Booth, who spent time with the Stones when they were recording their album, Exile On Main Street. And the single-best account of what the Stones are like when they are on tour remains STP by Robert Greenfield, a journalist who went along for the ride.

 

   So it is with the Beatles. The only book that captures the madness of the Apple years is The Longest Cocktail Party, written by Richard DiLello, an American who was ‘house hippie’ at Apple headquarters. Books by ex-wives and lovers can also be revealing. Few of us had any sense of how much in thrall John Lennon was to Yoko Ono till May Pang published Loving John, her account of the brief period when Lennon left Ono to be with Pang.

 

   But the best book in this genre is Wonderful Tonight by Patti Boyd. She was the top model who first married George Harrison and had Something written for her. Then, Eric Clapton, Harrison’s best friend, fell in love with her and wrote Layla about his unrequited passion.

 

   In no time at all, Boyd had requited in full and left Harrison for Clapton, who wrote Wonderful Tonight in her honour. As if all this was not enough, Harrison then recorded a bizarre and slightly deranged cover of Bye Bye Love in her memory. (“There goes my baby, with you know who.”)

 

   I have read most of the Harrison and Clapton biographies but none of the books made the real men behind the songs come alive as clearly as Patti Boyd’s book did.

 

   So, what’s next? Mick Jagger accepted an advance to write an autobiography in the 1980s. A senior literary editor from the Sunday Times was assigned to work with Jagger. Unfortunately, Old Rubber Lips wouldn’t tell him anything interesting and their collaboration produced a manuscript of such unredeeming blandness that the publisher refused to put it into print. Jagger returned the advance.

 

   Gossip has it that Mick Jagger is so annoyed by the Keith Richards book that he is reluctant to participate in a planned Rolling Stones tour. I have a suggestion. Perhaps he should go on stage and sing Satisfaction for the five millionth time. That way, Stone fans will get to see their idols in concert for what might well be the very last time. Then, Jagger can have his revenge by writing his own book and telling what it was like to be in a band with the world’s most famous junkie.