Reviews for The Rolling Stones : the biography
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Veteran biographer Spitz has written a terrific biography of the Rolling Stones, the quintessential rock band that has lasted longer than seemed possible when they emerged in the 1960s. Spitz begins with a marvelous prologue in which two teenage boys recognize each other at a train station one morning in a suburb east of London. He quickly and vividly describes their physical appearance (Mick Jagger’s “extraordinary, offbeat” face; Keith Richards’ “protruding ears” and “quick, wolfish smile”) while deftly suggesting what they had in common: natural rebels who enjoyed pushing boundaries and who spoke the same musical language (Jagger, then known as Mike, carries a clutch of Chess records). This scene is emblematic of the entire tone of the book. Over the course of 700 pages, Spitz takes his glorious time telling the band’s familiar story with much loving detail and mindfulness. There’s a lot to digest here: decades worth of material and perpetual motion, from starting out as Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys in London to their first U.S. visit as the Rolling Stones to drug busts, the debacle that was Altamont, and up to their 2024 Hackney Diamonds tour. This is a must for every fan of the Stones and rock ’n’ roll, a work of music history to savor.
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Sturdy biography of the iconic if now superannuated bad boys of rock ’n’ roll. “Mick had always sworn that he couldn’t see himself singing ‘Satisfaction’ when he was fifty,” writes seasoned music journalist Spitz. Yet here he is, beyond 80, singing away, a survivor, like bandmate Keith Richards, of seven decades in the biz. That the band would have come so far didn’t seem like it was in the cards way back in early 1963, when a blues-smitten London School of Economics student named Mike Jagger first took the stage with Richards—to the chagrin of musician-impresario Alexis Korner, who likened Jagger’s smooth moves to Marilyn Monroe. But Jagger was a couldn’t-stand-still machine, trained as an athlete in his youth by his gym teacher father and, though no stranger to rock excess, also supremely disciplined. Spitz’s biography extends the late, great Stanley Booth’sTrue Adventures of the Rolling Stones up to the present, albeit the present is mostly an endless revisitation of the past, with Richards defiantly proclaiming, “This is not something you retire from.” And if the Glimmer Twins haven’t made a truly memorable album for half a century, they stand as an object lesson not just in stamina but in business acumen, something would-be entrepreneurs would benefit from studying. Spitz pulls together the well known but adds insightful moments, especially in his study of Brian Jones’ steady decline into addiction and madness; he also delivers bits and pieces of news, such as the fact that Jagger tried to recruit Ron Wood when Jones was first fired, settling for Mick Taylor when the Small Faces refused to let Wood go. (Wood finally joined in 1975.) More than anything, Spitz offers a good explanation for why the Stones have endured, filthy rich while continuing to present themselves as unwholesome, dangerous street rats: “The blues the Stones played was explicitly sexual, provocative, rough around the edges, and rebellious.” A treasure trove for Stones fans. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
