Led by multimillionaires Sir Michael Philip Jagger and the now abstemious Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones are as solid a fixture in the British psyche as the Royal Family, the Houses of Parliament and 100-year-old naturalist Sir David Attenborough. This was not always the case, however. Indeed, for the first 15 or so years of a career that seems eternal, they were looked upon by the forces of law and order as desperadoes and misfits, a menace to society, a shocking manifestation of undisciplined adolescents whose long hair, scruffy clothes and jungle music was an affront to polite civilisation. “Lock ’em up,” they cried and, by golly, they almost succeeded.
This doorstopper of a biography by US writer Bob Spitz is therefore a timely reminder of those times, essential reading for anyone who became a Stones fan during the last 40 years or so, which I’ll wager is the vast majority of those who during that time have packed stadiums around the world and paid top dollar to watch Jagger and Co strut their stuff on stages large enough to accommodate the many offspring Jagger, Richards (and Brian Jones) have sired between them. For this generation of fans, that tongue and lips logo is as universal as the curvy contours of a Coca-Cola bottle, the cowbell intro to ‘Honky Tonk Women’ as recognisable as any national anthem and The Rolling Stones a byword for a dependable night out of rollicking rock and roll.
Spitz has worked very hard to document the lives and times of the Stones and, like most biographers of rock performers who’ve stayed the course, his focus is almost exclusively on the early years. By the halfway point of this 690-page book we’re still in the 1960s, on the tour that led up to Altamont, not yet a quarter into the group’s lifespan; 150 pages later, in 1975, Jagger is vainly defending the cover of Black And Blue; 100 pages after that we’ve reached the acknowledgements followed by 90 pages of end matter. All of which demonstrates how Spitz has prudently concluded that once the Stones became rich, touring the world every three or four years – seven such tours are helpfully itemised in one paragraph on page 586 – to amass vast fortunes, their story becomes repetitive, even dull; far better to concentrate on the shenanigans that came before, the naughty years on which their legend was built.
This, of course, is anything but dull and neither is the book. At its heart are the many chapters that cover the period between 1965 and 1975, which relate the extraordinary highs and lows of the Stones’ saga: fan mania that rivals The Beatles; pissing on garage forecourts; the Redlands and other drug busts; the court appearances; Jagger’s blustery relationship with Marianne Faithfull; the Brian/Anita/Keith love triangle; Jones’ downfall and death; the financial squeeze after falling out with US co-manager Allen Klein; Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street – the great triumvirate of Stones’ masterworks; the nightmare of Altamont and its repercussions; Richards’ debilitating heroin addiction; tax exile in France; and, finally, back on the road as a stadium-filling juggernaut.
Quite how Jagger, firmly in charge after Klein and early manager Andrew Oldham are dismissed, found the reserves of mental stamina to deal with it all while writing songs and fronting the group on stage boggles the mind. Spitz covers all these high jinks in great and often illuminating detail, a roller-coaster ride through the Stones’ devil-may-care years that makes this central section of his book a page-turner of the highest order, most especially when recounting the mischief that occurred at Nellcôte, Richards’ hideaway on the French Riviera that became a flophouse for every ne’er do well for miles around.
Before and after all this, the momentum isn’t quite as recklessly debauched. Assembling the group from the pool of London’s young blues devotees took time but, unlike The Beatles, there was no Hamburg or Liverpool to hone their chops on stage for three years before fame beckoned. Once the right five had found each other, it happened quite quickly, as did the notoriety stoked by Oldham who was brilliant at PR but out his depth controlling this bunch of strong-willed characters. Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts keep their noses clean for the most part, maintaining a low profile during the mayhem; Jones, acknowledged early on as the best musician in the group, is fragile, losing his way, an accident waiting to happen; and, once they started writing songs together, Jagger and Richards take control, each reliant on the other though no prizes for guessing who was the most unreliable, at least until he weaned himself off heroin following that 1977 Toronto bust. Mick Taylor, who never really fitted in, comes and goes. Ron Wood is a far better fit, musically and mentally. WAGS come and go.
An awful lot is crammed into the final two chapters. The penultimate finds Jagger and Richards at loggerheads, the bone of contention the former’s stab at a solo career, and for a while the group’s future is in serious doubt. Meanwhile, they lose Ian Stewart, the Rolling Stone who doesn’t get his photograph taken, Watts goes off the rails, and Wyman hits the headlines through his courtship of 13-year-old Mandy Smith whom he would marry when she turned 18. Exhausted, he leaves the band four years later.
The final chapter concertinas the period from around 1993 to the present day, 30+years, and closes, rightly, with the death of Charlie Watts and a moving report of the tribute night at Ronnie Scott’s organised by his great friend and fellow jazz enthusiast Dave Green. A brief epilogue finds the author attending a 2024 Stones show in Los Angeles. “Mick and Keith were both eighty years old,” notes Spitz.
The book’s only flaw is that it is written with an American accent, almost certainly a reflection of its intended market. While the size of America – where in some parts the weekly grocery shop involves a day-long round trip – can perhaps explain how Dartford is described as “around the corner” from Ealing (they’re 65 miles apart), and Cheltenham is “nearby” to Guilford (about 100 miles apart), the vast majority of reviews quoted are from US media, and the UK – the country of the Stones’ birth, after all – doesn’t get much of a look in after the group has decamped to France. Still, this is a minor quibble in what is the most substantial Stones book I’ve read since Keith Richards’ Life in 2010.
As stated, the book has 690 pages, plus two 16-page picture sections, includes lengthy source notes and a decent index. The front cover features a magnificent portrait of Jagger and Richards by Norman Seeff, albeit from the era of Mick Taylor, who is on the reverse alongside Wyman and Watts. I think Woody or Jones belong there myself.
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