There is no definitive figure tallying the exact amount of Rolling Stones biographies published over the last half-century, but it must run into triple figures at least. Which brings one question to the fore: do we really need another? Keith Richards has his own autobiography, Life, readily available and by all accounts, there’s more chance of cows grazing on the moon than Mick Jagger spilling the beans via a memoir of his own in the near future.
Bob Spitz’s Beatles book was well received 20 years ago, and he’s spent the last five years writing The Rolling Stones. And if you want just one Stones bio, this is the one to grab.
Admittedly there is little new here – more slight ripples from bystanders than waves of revelations from band members – but as a whole The Rolling Stones is an absolute blast of a read with wasted musicians, hangers-on, drug dealers and aristocratic flunkies running riot, debauchery, broken relationships and near misses with the grim reaper as the Stones, manage to churn out seminal classics like Exile On Main Street. The pages that zoom in on that album’s mad chaos and creation make this book well worth picking up on their own.
In fact, the band’s first two decades are covered in forensic detail, with less attention paid to the 1990s; the pace picks up again at the end for Hackney Diamonds, the latest Stones album at the time of writing.Spitz does for Jagger and company what Craig Brown’s One Two Three Four does for The Beatles: no bad thing, and making for a highly enjoyable read without a dull moment.
