Back in the Eighties and Nineties, the release of a major rock star memoir was a fairly uncommon event. Noteworthy ones like George Harrison’s I, Me, Mine (1980), Iggy Pop’s I Need More (1982), and David Lee Roth’s Crazy From the Heat (1997) popped up every once in a while, but it wasn’t until the 2000s that this genre started making regular appearances on the New York Times bestseller list, thanks to landmark works like Anthony Kiedis’ Scar Tissue, Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One, Eric Clapton’s The Autobiography, Keith Richards’ Life, and Patti Smith’s Just Kids.
In recent years, everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Cher to Billy Idol, Debbie Harry, Elton John, Gregg Allman, Neil Young, Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Rod Stewart, Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Thurston Moore, and Kim Gordon have all written their own books. But there’s still a long list of stubborn hold-outs. Here’s a look at 9 of them, and the likely reasons they have yet to share their stories with the world.
Why Hasn’t It Happened? Jagger has come extremely close to publishing a memoir at numerous points over the past few decades, even inking a deal with a publisher once and picking a ghost writer. But he always gets cold feet at the last moment. “When I actually started to get into it, I just didn’t enjoy reliving my life,” Jagger said in 2021. “So I just said: ‘I can’t be bothered with this,’ and gave the money back. If you wanna write an autobiography, you can’t do it in a week. It takes a lot out of you. It takes a lot of reliving emotions, reliving friendships, reliving ups and downs … I just didn’t enjoy the process.”
Will It Happen? Most likely not. The Rolling Stones grossed $235 million for playing just 20 concerts in 2024. The money he stands to make from even a huge bestseller cannot come close to that, and it would require a lot more work and hassle. Also, Jagger has lived many lifetimes over the past eight decades. As he suggested, that’s a lot of memories that he’s probably not in a hurry to relive. We have memoirs from Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, and Bill Wyman, along with countless other books about the Stones. They’ll just have to do.
Why Hasn’t It Happened? George Harrison released I, Me, Mine in 1980, and Paul McCartney teamed up with Barry Myles in 1993 for Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now, which isn’t technically an autobiography, but was based on 35 hours of interviews, and fully authorized by McCartney. Ringo, however, has refused to pen his own book. “I’ve been asked to write my autobiography and really they only want eight years,” he told Rolling Stone in 2012, referring to the time he spent in a certain Sixties rock band. “And I keep saying it would be five volumes before I even got into the band.”
Will It Happen? It would be a fantastically perverse move if Ringo indeed published five books that don’t even get the reader to 1962. And while we’d love that Rory and the Hurricanes book, there’s not much of a market for it. If this is ever going to happen, he’d likely need to relent and focus at least half of a single-volume book on the Beatles. He doesn’t seem eager to do that now, and at age 84, the clock is ticking pretty fast. We’re betting against this one too.
Why Hasn’t It Happened? Simply put, she doesn’t want to piss everyone off. “The world is not ready for my memoir, I guarantee you,” she told Billboard in 2014. “All of the men I hung out with are on their third wives by now, and the wives are all under 30. If I were to write what really happened between 1972 and now, a lot of people would be very angry with me. It’ll happen some day, just not for a very long time. I won’t write a book until everybody is so old that they no longer care. Like, ‘I’m 90, I don’t care what you write about me.’ I am loyal to a fault. And I have a certain loyalty to these people that I love because I do love them, and I will always love them. I cannot throw any of them under the bus until I absolutely know that they will not care.”
Will It Happen? A smart move would be to write the book now and hold it back until everyone she might offend is gone. If she doesn’t even start until all of her exes are dead or senile, it’ll likely never happen. We’d say this one is a 50/50 proposition, at best.
Billy Joel
Why Hasn’t It Happened? Back in 2011, Joel took a $3 million advance from Harper Collins and teamed with former Rolling Stone writer Fred Schruers for a memoir entitled The Book of Joel. But at the very last minute, when the book was just two months away from hitting and copies had already been sent out to the press, Joel returned the money and pulled the plug on the whole thing. “It took working on writing a book to make me realize that I’m not all that interested in talking about the past,” Joel said, “and that the best expression of my life and its ups and downs has been and remains my music.” Three years later, Schruers repurposed the material into Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography.
Will It Happen? For someone of Billy Joel’s immense wealth, $3 million is pocket change. He makes that playing a single stadium concert. If he wasn’t interested in 2011, there’s little reason to think he’ll be interested again in 2031 unless he starts feeling nostalgic and wants to tell his story before it’s too late. The odds seem against this one.
Robert Plant
Why Hasn’t It Happened? Much like Ringo Starr, Plant faces an issue where publishers are only interested in one portion of his life. And a lot of crazy shit went down during that period that he’s not anxious to dredge up. “We were representing a challenge to the order,” Plant told Classic Rock in 2017. “So, do we want to chum up and cuddle up on the whole idea of going to a publisher and telling stories? I mean, what — who — for? Those stories are locked nicely between my two ever-growing ear holes. So fuck it. There’s a lot in there, and that’s where it’s staying.”
Will It Happen? When Robert Plant doesn’t want to do something, he doesn’t do it, period. A Led Zeppelin reunion tour would make him substantially more than any book, and he hasn’t done that, either. Both endeavors would force him to spend significant time in the past when he’d rather look forward. This one is never, ever happening.
Why Hasn’t It Happened? Back in the Seventies, the Eagles hired Fugs frontman Ed Sanders to write their official band biography. Don Henley even gave him his original Hotel California lyric manuscripts. But Henley didn’t like Sanders’ first draft, and the whole endeavor got brushed to the side when the group broke up. Decades later, the Hotel California papers wound up at the center of a legal mess in New York that’s way too complex to get into here. But the whole thing quite possibly soured Henley on the idea of a memoir.
Will It Happen? The infamous Sanders book will never see the light of day. But it’s possible that Henley will decide it’s time to tell his own story at some point. Right now, he’s making an astonishing amount of money playing the Sphere as part of the Eagles’ ongoing farewell tour. A book probably won’t even be a thought until the band finally wraps up their career for real.
Why Hasn’t It Happened? With six kids, regular world tours, charity work, the occasional movie, and yet another album in the works, Madonna simply hasn’t had time to sit down and write out the story of her life. It has been on her mind, though. ”I’m sure I will one day,” she said in 2015. “I’ve got so many tales to tell. If I wrote my book that would be from start to finish. And that’s a whole lot of ground to cover.”
Will It Happen? Before she gets to work on any book, Madonna needs to finish the biopic about her life she’s been threatening to direct for years. The movie appeared to be dead in 2023, but she brought it back to life last year with help from Secretary writer Erin Cressida Wilson. Once that is in the can, and it is still quite possibly several years away, she can maybe start thinking about a book. Whenever it happens, it’ll be a very, very big deal.
Why Hasn’t It Happened? Axl Rose has more alleged skeletons in his closet than the vast majority of people on this planet. If you doubt us, just google “Erin Everly lawsuit” or the lyrics to “One in a Million.” We can’t imagine he’d like to go over the events of the late 1980s and early 1990s in a book. He won’t grant interviews these days even to talk about the present. And with GN’R back in stadiums following the 2016 reunion with Slash and Duff, he certainly doesn’t need the money.
Will It Happen? Nah. Axl is basically invisible to the world when he’s not onstage with Guns N’ Roses. It’s clearly the way he prefers it. Writing a book means not just talking about your past, but going on a media tour to sell the damn thing. Can you imagine him signing books at Barnes and Noble and taking photos with fans? We can’t either.
Why Hasn’t It Happened? There’s an official Pearl Jam book that the band published in 2011 to commemorate their 20th anniversary. But Vedder has never even hinted that he wants to write a memoir. He doesn’t have skeletons like Axl, but he also is a private person who is not eager to dive deep into his past. It’s nearly impossible, for example, to imagine him writing about divorcing his first wife, Beth Liebling, or the details of how Pearl Jam parted ways with all four drummers prior to Matt Cameron.
Will It Happen? Believe it or not, Vedder just turned 60. Pearl Jam are still going strong, even if they’ve dramatically cut the running time of their concerts. The day may come when they stop touring at all and Vedder feels like putting his saga down on paper. But we’re likely a long, long way away from that day.
