Among the runes of rock lit ... Julian Cope among the Ninestone Close ancient stones in the Peak District. Photograph: David Sillitoe
I couldn't help feeling disappointed by the recent news that Mick Jagger has stopped work on his autobiography. It's debatable whether the world needs yet another Rolling Stones book, but to get their remarkable story straight from "the mouth" itself would surely have been worth something, even if he himself seems to be claiming that it was all "rather dull."
There is at least some compensation in that Jagger hasn't entirely turned his back on literary endeavour, declaring: "I'd love to find another form to do it in. A book form but not a showbiz memoir type." I'm not holding my breath for a work of genius, however. There's every possibility that the co-writer of Shine A Light will come up with something special, but rock and writing have a distinctly patchy relationship.
It's been widely acknowledged that talented musicians don't necessarily write good books ever since Bob Dylan launched Tarantula on a distinctly under-whelmed world and John Lennon's In His Own Write bemused and failed to amuse a generation. It would be a foolish publisher that turned down the chance to publish the musings of music's aristocracy - but a brave one that actually reads the damn things cover to cover.
My particular un-favourite in the long and shameful canon of appalling songster writing (rockerature?) has to be Billy Corgan's Blinking With Fists, a collection of poems that attains a level of sheer-bloody-awfulness not seen since Sarah Ferguson gave us the benefit of her thoughts in Budgie The Helicopter. If you don't believe me, just read the following samples selected (almost) at random: "At the bottom of my hole lies a soul so cold/Collecting aqua blue marigold/If you are willing to dive for love this deep/You might find all that you seek." And: "The most eternal sun-drenched kiss is locked in my mind as something I won't miss."
All the same, and bad as many of the results have been when the titanic egos of the music industry have published in paper form, the idea that musicians and literature don't mix is, like all truisms, not entirely true. Dylan may be responsible for Tarantula, but I'd recommend his Chronicles to anyone. What's more, I'd recommend it as much as a piece of skilful writing as an inevitably fascinating account of one of the biggest cultural icons of the last century.
In fact, when rockers write about the subject they know and love best - themselves - the results are often riveting. Marilyn Manson's The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell, a nihilistic and frequently alarming rendering of his life story, is little short of superb. I have a strong suspicion that his music can only really appeal to disaffected youths with serious issues relating to the tidiness of their bedrooms, but the book said more to me about modern American alienation than any number of cultural studies volumes that I've read.
Meanwhile, for a real journey into the weird, I'd also highly encourage reading Brian Wilson's Wouldn't It Be Nice. Admittedly, this isn't entirely the poor old Beach Boy's own work (seeming to have been largely put together by his domineering doctor Eugene Landy and a journalist from People magazine), but that doesn't detract from the power of the insights it provides into the euphoria of creation and the horror and fear of nervous breakdown, not to mention Landy's own messiah complex.
Great as those books are, however, the rock book I'd take to my desert island would have to be Julian Cope's Head-On/Repossessed. The Arch Drude has received more acclaim in recent years for his (also excellent) books on megalithic stone structures, but it's his autobiography that I hope he'll be best remembered for. I'm prepared to admit that his music may be an acquired taste but I defy anyone not to be entertained by his prose. The book is a work of astonishing, brilliant madness. It's beautifully written and as interesting for the strange hermit-like retreat he undertook in Tamworth as his stories of rock and roll excess ... although, of course, that excess is astonishing. I'd even go as far as to say that many of Cope's drug reminiscences are as effective as Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. And I can't help thinking that even Hunter S Thompson would draw the line at playing "sock" - a game Cope used to play when touring America. It involved placing a sock on his head, climbing out of the window of a moving car, crawling over the roof and back in the other side. The only rule, he tells us, is that "you mustn't die".
I'd be surprised if Mick Jagger manages to write something good enough to make me jettison Head On from my desert island reading list - but I can't help hoping that with his brains, not to mention his long history as a glimmer twin, he may come up with something quite special. Indeed, if industry rumours are true and Morrissey is in fact hovering over the dotted line of his own book deal, we could be in for a golden age of rock literature. Cope keeps promising the third instalment of his life story, too.
