BOOKS: Mick Jagger: Philip Norman

Oct. 16—Philip Norman's "Mick Jagger" is far less gossipy and much less salacious than Christopher Anderson's "Mick: The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger."

Norman brings to "Mick Jagger" the same thorough approach and reporting that he applied to similar rock star biographies of John Lennon and Paul McCartney. He doesn't skimp on details in Jagger's relationships with various women and lovers and with his bandmates in the Rolling Stones.

But Norman spends far less time chronicling the supposed arrangements of the Jagger bedroom than Anderson's "Mick."

Still, like Anderson, Norman tells a riveting story — a real page turner of a biography even at 600 pages. Granted, the majority of the book delves into the first half of Jagger's life. From the 1980s until the book's publication about a decade ago takes up less than 100 pages of the book.

Anderson spends the early pages looking at the upbringing of Michael Jagger — the kid who carried blues records everywhere and had formed the relationships that created the Rolling Stones while still a teenager. Then, the bulk of the book looks at the Stones' rollercoaster ride of success from the early 1960s into the mid-1980s when the band was still recording hit records on a regular basis.

The book wraps with Jagger pushing 70 — he is now pushing 80 and doesn't seem to have slowed down.

Still, even with the great research and detail, "Mick Jagger" never really unravels the mystique of Mick Jagger. What turned a middle-class English kid named Michael raised by a gym coach dad and housewife mom into Mick, the swaggering, preening rock star?

We may never know.

As Norman mentions several times in the biography, Jagger claims he has no memories of the past. It's all one big whirl. Jagger once had a contract to pen a memoir but he never wrote it. Never really gave himself to it.

Of course, Jagger is definitely old enough to know that the mystery of Jagger is part of the mystique of Jagger and a prime component in what has led to his and the Stones continued success.

So, if Jagger knows what transformed him, well, he may never tell.