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Heart of Stone

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Heart of Stone: The Unauthorized life of Mick Jagger
By Laura Jackson
Smith Gryphon, 1997

There were two signs that should have told me that this was going to be an awful book. The first clue was in the author "bio" on the inside if the dust jacket that said Ms Jackson was the author of "Golden Stone, in which she was the first to reveal the murderer of Brian Jones." It's news to me that anyone was tried and/or convicted of this offence. Since I haven't read the book (after reading this one I have no desire to ever read anything else by this author) I wonder if she means that the other Stones killed him by kicking him out of the band.

The second sign was the back of the dust jacket itself. On it there are the following quotes:

"Mick completely broke me in the end." - Chrissie Shrimpton
"It would have killed me staying with Mick. He has always been quite brutal towards his women." - Marianne Faithful
"I would have died for him." - Marsha Hunt
"Mick doesn't think much of women." - Bianca Jagger
"I cried myself inside out when Mick went off with Carla Bruni." - Jerry Hall

These quotes combined with the title of the book - Heart of Stone - should have told me exactly what the premise of the book was. Jackson's main objective in writing this book seems to be to portray Jagger as an absolute bastard. By printing random quotes out of context and not crediting them, Jackson makes this easy. When one goes into research with a pet hypothesis, it is very easy to gather data that supports that hypothesis and ignore anything that doesn't.

In my opinion, this book is the epitome of shoddy journalism that passes for a celebrity bio. Throughout the book Jackson uses quotes to prove her point but doesn't say where the quotes are from. There is no "works cited" page or bibliography when it is obvious that she gathered her information from many other written sources. By not crediting the quotes, Jackson makes it look like they come from interviews she has conducted - which is not true.

Because the book is "unauthorized" she did not have access to any of the Stones or their friends and families. If you read the acknowledgements page it is clear that she did not have

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