Throughout five decades of fronting the Rolling Stones, Mick Jagger has been seen as the ultimate arrogant superstar, whose sexual appetite rivals Casanova's and whose supposed reckless drug use touched off the most famous scandal in rock history.

Now Philip Norman reveals a Jagger far more complex than the cold archseducer of myth: here at last is the real story of how a shy economics student became a modern Antichrist…of the beautiful women from Chrissie Shrimpton to Jerry Hall, whom he has bedded but not always dominated . . . of the enduring but ever-fraught partnership with his "Glimmer Twin," Keith Richards. Mick Jagger, above all, explores the keen and calculating intelligence that has kept the Stones on their plinth as "the world's greatest rock'n'roll band" for half a century.