Lively, if generic, look at Stones' frontman

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Mick Jagger with a signature move onstage. (POSTMEDIA AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Book review

Mick

The Wild Life and Mad Genius of Jagger

• By Christopher Andersen
• Gallery Books, 328 pages, $30

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Mick Jagger with L'Wren Scott after her fall collection was modelled during Fashion Week in New York in February. (RICHARD DREW / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

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A tiny todger? The size of Mick Jagger's member has been the subject of much speculation since his bandmate Keith Richards described it thus in his 2010 memoir, Life.

But you will will learn one thing in American celebrity journalist and author Christopher Andersen's crassly candid biography of the Rolling Stones lead singer and co-songwriter.

Inch for inch, ounce for ounce, no man's todger deserves a longer standing ovation than Jagger's.

Since the Stones gave their first performance in their native London 50 years ago this month, Mick's manhood (which turns 69 along with its owner on July 26) has performed with superhuman regularity and reliability.

Andersen claims that Jagger told French model and jet setter Carla Bruni, with whom he carried on an eight-year affair before she married the president of France, that he had slept with 4,000 women -- among them Madonna, Angelina Jolie, Linda Ronstadt, Bette Midler, Uma Thurman and Carly Simon.

That might not be a world record for the most popular of indoor sports. Basketball icon Wilt Chamberlain and actor Warren Beatty both have reached the five figures (at least according to their press agents).

But they confined themselves to women. Not the Mickster. "Everyone is basically bisexual," Andersen quotes him as saying. Among the males he has allegedly bedded are David Bowie and Eric Clapton.

At one point in the late '90s, while still married to wife No. 2, Jerry Hall, Jagger sought counselling for his sex addiction -- "until he seduced the therapist," Andersen reports.

"I think he is like a sex vampire," Andersen quotes the therapist, Natasha Terry, as saying. "Being with all these different people makes him feel young and gives him all this energy."

Andersen, 63, has some 30 books to his credit, among them five tell-alls about the British royal family and standalone bios of Barbra Streisand, Madonna, Michael Jackson and Jane Fonda.

This is certainly not the first life of Jagger. American music writer Marc Spitz released one, Jagger, less than a year ago. Anderson published an earlier Jagger bio in 1993. This one presumably adds 20 years of philandering, plus salacious detail he couldn't confirm the first time around.

Anderson claims he spent "years" conducting interviews. But he also recycles from the zillions of previously published books and articles. He lists his sources for each of his 10 chapters, but in the text itself he often fudges what's original and what he borrows.

There is also a fair amount of sloppy duplication of material, including the odd quote. Another downside is the book's generic tone.

Artists who take charge of their own biographies, such as Richards did with Life and Bob Dylan in Chronicles, have managed an engaging voice that leaps from the page. Mick, however, reads like a long, and explicit, People magazine article.

Mind you, the book is comprehensive, well-organized and lively. Andersen tells Jagger's story in roughly chronological order, from his birth in war-ravaged Dartford (where the neighbour's home was incinerated by German bombs) through his incipient dotage, staying up until dawn watching Turner Classic Movies.

The basics are well-known. Jagger's folks called him "Mike." He has always been the most business-minded Stone, disciplined, driven and fit, qualities he inherited from his father, Joe, one of the U.K.'s leading fitness experts.

He and Richards have fought like brothers, the main sticking point being Jagger's social climbing, a trait, Andersen says, that comes from his working-class mother, Eva, who married above her station.

He drove his two wives, Bianca and Jerry, to distraction with his relentless womanizing. His official offspring count is seven by four women. The oldest, Karis (by Marsha Hunt), is 41; the youngest, Lucas (by Luciana Morad), is 13.

Jagger's main squeeze since 2001 has been American model and actress L'Wren Scott, a "6-foot-4 Mormon."

Some of the more amusing material centres on Jagger the aging Lothario. He still seduces girls with impunity but flies off the handle when his daughters run around with older men.

He maintains a punishing fitness regime. At 5-foot-9, he stills weighs 130 pounds, Andersen reports, and has a 27-inch waist. Anderson quotes Jagger saying he has no need of "potency enhancing" drugs and has avoided Botox. No mention, however, of what he does to maintain that enviably full mane of dark hair or the number of STDs he has contracted (or spread).

Andersen dutifully includes lots of numbers and facts about album sales and tour grosses, and he explains many insider references in song lyrics. But you're better off reading Richards if you want insight into the Glimmer Twins' creative methods.

As for that "tiny todger," Andersen finds several women to rise to Mick's defence.

"I beg to differ with Keith," says super-groupie Pamela Des Barres. "In all ways -- including size -- and on several occasions, I got plenty of satisfaction."

Jagger has other fine qualities as well, Anderson acknowledges. He doted on his parents, he has been a decent father and he has been loyal to old friends. On the other hand, he is a misogynist, a cheapskate and a compulsive seducer of his friends' girlfriends.

None of these things apparently worry him, because Jagger has no inclination toward self-reflection. But as Woody Allen once said, or maybe it was Socrates' younger brother, the examined life is highly over-rated.

Free Press Books editor Morley Walker played his old vinyl copies of Beggars' Banquet and Sticky Fingers after filing this review.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 21, 2012 J10