Following what we called an “awful experience” writing the infamous musician’s autobiography 30 years ago, Barry Coleman, Mick Jagger‘s ghostwriter a resigned.
Coleman’s decision to leave followed the original writer’s resignation, and he now admits he spent two dreadful weeks attempting to work with the unwilling Rolling Stones frontman, who eventually abandoned the project and refunded his $1,000,000 advance from publishing house Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Since then, Jagger has stated that the process of looking into his history has been “dull and upsetting”
In an interview with The Guardian, Barry Coleman stated that Jagger was not an eager partner, saying, “We spoke for a few minutes before he stopped responding my calls…Then the publishers told me that they now had a deal for the U.S. market, but they needed the finished book within two weeks or the deal was off.” Two chapters were “more or less presentable” at the time, according to the author, while the rest was “a pile of interview transcripts, and nothing related to recent years”
“It was a nightmare putting things together. Everything important was in there; there was simply nothing fascinating to say about it. Mick constantly seemed to be holding back in the transcripts, as if he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.”
When Coleman revealed his decision to leave, Jagger expressed his understanding by stating: “We’d talked a lot about whether he still wanted to go ahead or whether we could do it again but differently,..He simply refused to do it. I believe he honored his audience by not presenting them with a mundane account of an amazing life…” “In some ways, it reveals more about Mick than anything that could have been revealed in a lousy book. Mick needed to be able to talk to someone like a therapist and approach his life from a different perspective. Instead, we got something that was just too ordinary for Mick Jagger.”
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Author: Luke Traina
Photo: Marcel Antonisse / Anefo