Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger was long rumoured to have written a memoir about his time in the legendary rock band. It has been confirmed by publisher John Blake that it does, in fact, exist – as a 75,000-word “pristine typescript.” The downside? We just might never see it.
In an essay penned for The Spectator, Blake states that the memoir was written in reponse to all of the Rolling Stones misinformation in books published about Jagger and the Rolling Stones.
Calling the book “a little masterpiece”, Blake goes on to explain that many interesting anecdotes are in the draft. One of them is about a time when Jagger purchased a mansion while high on LSD, then got into an accident while riding a horse on the grounds.
“It is delicious, heady stuff. Like reading Elvis Presley’s diaries from the days before he grew fat and washed-up in Vegas,” he says.
According to Blake, the memoir was never published due to the lack of the manuscript being “light on sex and drugs. In the early 1980s shock and awe was a vital part of any successful autobiography.”
After several attempts were made by Blake to get permission to publish it now, he says the Stones’ manager, Joyce Smyth, rebuffed advances, telling him that Jagger had no memory of writing it.
Read the entire essay here.