Changes

However, events have rather overtaken the final portrait in the book – that of Mick Jagger. Two years ago, the general perception was that he had outgrown and lost interest in the Rolling Stones and that they were about to fade into the ether. Recently their fiftieth -anniversary celebrations and tour (or should we call it the Stones’ golden jubilee for short?) and a much-lauded appearance at the 2013 Glastonbury festival have silenced most of the doubters. Nevertheless, this is a portrait of an astonishingly contradictory chameleon, a man who was once the arch-subversive yet later received a knighthood, the articulate, well-educated and well-read dilettante who can play the insolent, barely coherent yobbo at the drop of a hat. His constant collaborator, groupmate and sparring partner Keith Richards, who allegedly threatened to slit his throat if he toured without the group and performed their songs on stage, once summed him up as ‘a bunch of guys’ and ‘it’s up to him which one you meet’. Brendon’s musical knowledge (or lack of it) lets him down, however, when he confuses Jagger’s third solo album with an earlier one by the Stones and calls it ‘Undercover Spirit’.