"Mick Jagger" on Keith Richards' Life by Bill Wyman (But Not The Rolling Stones' Bill Wyman)
Slate's Bill Wyman once got in a legal tussle with the Rolling Stones' ex-bassist Bill Wyman because his name was also Bill Wyman. Happily, he was allowed to keep using the name he was born with--a certain David Jones wasn't so lucky--and now he's used that particular coincidence to write a "response" to the recent Keith Richards' recent autobiography Life by "Mick Jagger." (UPS delivered the manuscript to the wrong Bill Wyman, you see.)
Like Lester Bangs' review of the Count Five's Snowflakes Falling On The International Dateline (Columbia MS-7528; "The masterpiece among their albums...") it's a nice piece of rock crit sci-fi:
Two things I think, are important. Our bond; his talent. We blink at that point, and go 40 years forward, and he has written a book that says, essentially, that I have a small dick. That I am a bad friend. That I am unknowable.The reviewers, who idolize Keith, don't ask why this is all in here. We have rarely spoken of such things publicly, and tangentially even then. We don't talk about it in private, either, and, no, he hasn't been in my dressing room in 20 years. I thought we both learned that there is no point in sharing anything at all with the press, save a few tidbits for the upbeat The Stones are back in top rocking form! article that accompanies each of our tours. I think Keith never appreciated the tedious hours I had to spend with Jann Wenner to accomplish that.
But I know why it is all here.
Pages of what-could-have-been between Mick and Keith here.
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