BOOKS

BOOKS

BAD BOY CAUGHT WITH TROUS ERS DOWN by Lester Bongs

Lester Bongs

by

MICK JAGGER: EVERYBODY'S LUCIFER Tony Scaduto (David McKay)

There�s always. a discrepancy between a celebrity�s real personality and his public image, and just as often the celebrity�s own handling of fame and his sense of himself as a separate entity are even more tangled.

That sort of egocentric snarl is what this book is about.

It may seem obvious, but it does help explain why Mick Jagger has never given an interesting interview in his life. Which in turn helps explain why this biography, for which none of the Stones gave direct interviews, is such an interesting and even vital book.

It�s vital because it provides the most graphic picture yet of the perverse strengths and welcome frailties of a guy on whom we�ve lavished a surfeit of adulatory fantasies for a decade now; the meat of Scaduto�s investigations provides some long-overdue demythicising.

According to Scaduto, Mick derives his extraordinary staying power in rock�s ephemeral world from �driving ambition,� a �power lust� and stillunshed �adolescent need for egogratification,� coupled with an �ability to sidestep personal problems and postpone facing up to them by pretending the unpleasant will go away if ignored long enough.� All lubricated by what English blues daddy Alexis Korner saw as �the total amorality that... Jagger, while playing the role of outlaw

deviant should also take the (to fans) invisible helm of �many roles — giving the interviews again, getting his photo in the papers, directing the band�s career, becoming almost a co-manager ..

The other side of the coin, and the true strength of this reportorically erratic book, is the rake�s progress from.a kid who for all his sullenness was actually relunctant to fling off the London School of Economics for a full-time rock career, through various stations of the hip poseur, to wind up a snot-rich aristocrat living on the Riviera for tax reasons and declaring, �I don�t like the people or the weather in

by

Author of BOB DYLAN: An Intimate Biography

France, and the food�s greasy. They�re all thieves down there too.�

This is where the droll devices of Scaduto�s narrative sometimes attain the status of high comedy. Here is Jagger with his »three great loves: Chrissie Shrimpton, Marianne Fafthfull, and Bianca, uh, Jagger. The first two were driven, by such interpersonal untidiness as a homosexual affair with early Stones manager/producer Andrew Loog Oldham and the fact that you couldn�t discuss simple little matters like drug ethics with Mick, to separate but equally melodramatic attempts at suicide. And his wedding to Bianca, at which the theme from �Love Story� was played and he had to bang on the door and holler with an angry mob at his back before he was let in the church, constitutes one of the funniest sections of the book.

Even better are the various evolutionary permutations of what must, for want of a better phrase, be termed Mick�s social consciousness. He was always supposed to be the penultimate bad boy, from �Would You Let Your Daughter Marry a Rolling Stone� tabloid blurbs to Exile On Main Street. What are we to make, then, of this sneering bandito�s abrupt ascendance to being �sought after by the younger members of the aristocracy: Gossip columnists were reporting that Jagger was a friend of Princess Margaret,� or, even worse,' the day he finally got around to asking his Portuguese maid to come up the back stairs?

Probably the same thing we think of how he turned his celebrated dope bust into an occasion for instant martyrdom, as the liberal English press rushed to his defense. Even though, to hear Marianne tell it, she was a little repulsed by his tears of sincere though overtly theatrical self-pity while ensconed in the slams for three nights, for Christ�s sake. They must have been nights well spent, though, because the young lord emerged on bail fairly oozing the appropriate radical rhetoric of the day: �There should be no such thing as private property ... Let�s drop acid in all the drinking water in the country ... What we need most of all is somebody to burn down London — burn, baby, burn!�

Everybody�s Lucifer also sheds new light on the inner workings of that determinedly insular institution called the Rolling Stones: little tidbits like the fact that the power in. the group swings on the hinge of Keith Richard�s loyalties, and an almost day-to-day calendar of how the-Stones snuffed the professional and corporeal Brian Jones as systematically as a Stalinist purge.

The hard-core fans may have small cavils with Scaduto�s approach, such as the fact that this is a biography whose source material seems principally to be the woman in the subject�s life — an approach which carries more credence when the interviewee is Marianne Faithfull than, oh, say Carol McDonald, who toured third-billed to the Stones when she was in Goldie and the Gingerbreads. There is also the matter of an extensive recounting of the Altamont tragedy/ massacre which seems in large part to be rewritten from an old Rolling Stone article, and a description of a Madison Square Garden concert which I�d swear was a review of Get Yer Ya-Ya�s Out.

For me, though, it�s all made worthwhile and the best rock biography yet by Scaduto�s genius for catching vast swaths of vanity and masscult conceit in such ingenuous little nets as this: �Jagger played the boorish East End lout, and the New Celebrities simply adored it. As did their parents thirty years before taxiing up to Harlem to see Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong.�

Lester Bangs

BLACK MAFIA Francis A.J. lanni (Simon & Schuster)

THE HEADHUNTERS: Number 1, HEROIN TRIPLE CROSS; Number 2, STARLIGHT MOTEL INCIDENT

John Weisman and Brian Boyer (Pinnacle)

It is pretty obvious by now that the days of the Godfather-style Mafia are numbered. Too much is known about the Organization for it to operate safely, and the young blood it recruits is far more interested in Big Deals than petty crime. After all, if you can buy a President, why bother selling heroin in the schoolyard? But the need for the

goods and services formerly supplied by the Sicilian Mafia, Cosa Nostra, or whatever you call it, is still there, and somebody has to fill the need. And just as the ethnic succession of the residents of a place like Harlem has gone from Irish to Italian to Black to Hispanic, so has the exploitation of its residents. More and more, the stuff the Mob�s getting tired of handling goes to enterprising black mobsters.

When the publication of Black Mafia was announced, I got excited. Would this be the book to blow the whistle on the Muslims (or the branch that seems

to be having heroin wars in various ghettos)? Would it seek to prove that Detroit heroin kingpin Henry Marzette was on the verge of starting a nationwide. Black syndicate shortly before his not-so-mysterious death?

The answer is no. Black Mafia has one of the most misleading titles I�ve ever seen. All it is is a study of some criminals in Harlem (a good many of them are Cuban and Puerto Rican, which hardly counts for black in my book) which shows that the world of the pimp, the smack dealer, and the hot-goods salesman intersect. That�s all. Swear to god. As a socio-anthropological study, which is what it started life as, it may have some value, but if you think you�re going to learn anything about a Black Mafia, you�d better go elsewhere.

To Pinnacle�s new Headhunters series, for instance. I thought they were going to be just another action series, which seems to be an increasingly popular publishing phenomenon, and I guess on one level they are, but one of the co-authors is Detroit Free Press reporter John Weisman, who blew the whistle on a lot of the heroin trade in Murder City. Exceptionally well-written for books of this sort, the Headhunters deal with a department within the Detroit Police which is detailed to investigate internal corruption. The heroes are Captain Eddie Martin and his black partner T.S. Putnam, and from the moment they join forces, the repartee doesn�t stop. Add to this a set of bad guys headed by Detroit heroin kingpin Henry Pacquette (does that name sound familiar?), a number of incredibly brutal, sadistic, corrupt and damnably realistic cops, and a good solid ear for speech, and you�ve got a dynamite combination. Compulsively readable — especially if you have some knowledge of Detroit so that when they drop a joke about Onassrs Coney Island you can get it — and quite informative, this is one series for everybody from action addicts to cop freaks to people who just plain like good writing to watch.

Plus, you can get seven of them (there are only two at the moment, but more are planned) for the price of Black

Mafia, and still have a quarter left!

Ed Ward

BUDDY HOLLY: A BIOGRAPHY IN WORDS, PHOTOGRAPHS, AND MUSIC by Elizabeth and Ralph Peer II (Peer International):: There�s really not all that much to say about Buddy Holly, it appears, but the Peers say it all with love and devotion. Especially revealing is the section on Buddy�s early days and the speculation on where his career was heading when the plane went down. Sheet music to 36 songs and some killer photos are the real selling points, though.

Ed Ward

TOP 10s & TRIVIA OF ROCK �N� ROLL AND RHYTHM AND BLUES 1950-1973 by Joe Edwards (Blueberry Hill):: Elvis Presley has had 38 top ten hit^ in 18 years. The Beatles had 31 hits in 6 years. Aretha Franklin�s first hit was an R&B tune entitled �Today I Sing the Blues� .. .That was in 1960. She�s had 33 singles in the top ten R&B charts since then. Did you know that when Domingo Samudio and the Pharoahs couldn�t get any gigs Dom changed his name to Sam the Sham? Where did all this wonderful information come from? From Top 10s & Trivia of Rock V Roll and Rhythm and Blues 1950-1973. Mr. Edwards has compiled nearly a quarter century of top 10 R&R and R&B charts. And he has done us the service of indexing top tens by title, then artist, both alphabetically. As if this were not enough he stashes a neat section of rock trivia questions and answers in the back. Top 10s and Trivia may be ordered exclusively, for $25, from Blueberry Hill Publishing Co., P.O. Box 24170, St. Louis, MO 63130. That�s about $1.09 per year.

Jack Scott

THE STRANGE WORLD OF THE HARE KRISHNAS by Faye Levine (Fawcett):: Although there�s clearly something very important about them to her, Ms. Levine is unable, try as she may, to bring the Krishna people across as anything other than one-dimensional bores. The fault may rest with the subject more than with the writer. But that�s of small consolation to readers who pick up this book thinking, as the title and cover blurbs imply, that they�re in for some kind of off-beat look at this phenomenon. I shoulda known better.

John Morthland