There's a pretty astonishing piece of criticism on Slate today about the new Keith Richards autobiography, Life. It purports to be by Mick Jagger himself, and comes with an editor's note attached at the top:
On a recent morning, the journalist Bill Wyman received a UPS package containing a typed manuscript. On reading it, he saw that it seemed to be the thoughts, at some length, of singer Mick Jagger on the recently published autobiography of his longtime songwriting partner in the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards. A handwritten note on an old piece of Munro Sounds stationery read: "Bill: For the vault. M."
From this, Wyman surmised that the package was intended for Jagger and Richards' former bandmate, the bassist Bill Wyman, who has assiduously overseen the band's archives over the past five decades and with whom Wyman the journalist coincidentally shares the same name...The manuscript he received is reprinted below.
The piece is a kind of vivid reminiscence of Jagger and Richards's time in the Rolling Stones together, and sharply observed, but alert readers might notice there is also an incongruously large amount of recapping what it is in the actual book, not to mention some suspiciously helpful autobiographical detail about the various parties involved. This is because, of course, Mick Jagger didn't actually write the article. Bill Wyman the journalist did.
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