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<\/p>\nBy early 1963, the Station Hotel in London had become an epicenter of the burgeoning British blues scene. On a blustery, snowy night that February, the Rolling Stones\u2019 classic early lineup took the stage for one of the first times, dazzling the audience with ferocious renditions of blues standards like Muddy Waters\u2019 \u201cI Want to Be Loved\u201d and Jimmy Reed\u2019s \u201cBright Lights, Big City.\u201d<\/p>\n
Multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, the band\u2019s founder and leader, synchronized guitars with Keith Richards, who favored a distinctive slashing and stinging style. Drummer Charlie Watts, the group\u2019s newest member, a jazz aficionado and an accomplished percussionist, propelled the music forward with a rock-solid beat.<\/p>\n
Anchoring the rhythm section with him was bassist Bill Wyman, who was recruited more for his spare VOX AC30 amp that the guitarists could plug into than for his musical skills. The stoic bassist proved a strong and innovative player. Together, he and Watts would go on to form one of rock\u2019s most decorated rhythm sections.<\/p>\n
Ian Stewart\u2019s energetic boogie-woogie piano style rounded out the sound. Months later, manager Andrew Loog Oldham kicked him out of the band for being \u201cugly,\u201d although Stewart continued to record, tour and serve as the band\u2019s road manager until his death in 1985.<\/p>\n
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This April 8, 1964, file photo shows the Rolling Stones during a rehearsal. The members, from left, are Brian Jones, guitar; Bill Wyman, bass; Charlie Watts, drums; Mick Jagger, vocals; and Keith Richards, guitar. <\/p>\n
(Associated Press)<\/p>\n
Fronting the group was Mick Jagger. Channeling the music like a crazed shaman, Jagger shimmied and sashayed, owning the stage like few lead singers have before or since. By the end of the night, the Stones had the crowd in a frenzy. Although only 30 people had made it to the gig because of the treacherous weather conditions, the hotel\u2019s booker had seen enough: He offered the Stones a regular gig.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Rolling Stones had caught fire. The music they were playing and the way they played it struck a chord with a young crowd starved for something different, something their own\u2026 It was soul-stirring, loud and uncompromising,\u201d writes Bob Spitz in \u201cThe Rolling Stones: The Biography,\u201d his magisterial work that charts the 60-year journey of \u201cthe greatest rock and roll band in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spitz, the author of strong biographies on the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, as well as Ronald Reagan and Julia Child, captures the drama, trauma and betrayals that have kept the Stones in the public\u2019s consciousness for more than six decades. It\u2019s all here: The Stones\u2019 evolution from a blues cover band to artistic rival of the Beatles; the musical peaks \u2014 \u201cAftermath,\u201d \u201cLet It Bleed\u201d and \u201cExile on Main Street\u201d as well as misfires like \u201cDirty Work\u201d; Keith\u2019s descent into a debilitating heroin addiction that nearly destroyed him and the band; the death of the \u201860s at the ill-fated Altamont free concert; Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and other lovers, partners and muses; the breakups, makeups and crackups; and perhaps most important, the unbreakable bond between Jagger and Richards at the center of it all.<\/p>\n
Although Spitz unearths little new information, he excels at presenting the Stones in glorious Technicolor. Spitz homes in on the telling details and anecdotes that give the band\u2019s story a deep richness and poignancy.<\/p>\n
Take \u201cSatisfaction,\u201d the Stones\u2019 1965 classic and first U.S. chart topper. The oft-told story is that Richards woke up in the middle of the night, grabbed the guitar that was next to his bed, and recorded the iconic riff and the phrase \u201cI can\u2019t get no \u2026 satisfaction\u201d on a cassette recorder in his Clearwater, Fla., hotel room before falling back asleep. But as Spitz notes, the song initially went nowhere in the studio. That is until Stewart purchased a fuzz box for Richards a few days later, which gave the tune a raunchier sound that perfectly matched Jagger\u2019s lyrics of frustration and alienation. A classic was born.<\/p>\n
Piercing the Stones mythology<\/p>\n
Spitz\u2019s deep reporting often pierces the mythology surrounding the band. Contrary to the popular belief of many fans, for instance, Jones bears much of the responsibility for the rift with his bandmates and his tragic demise.<\/p>\n
The most musically adventurous member of the group \u2014 he plays sitar on \u201cPaint It Black\u201d and dulcimer on \u201cLady Jane\u201d \u2014 Jones wasn\u2019t a songwriter. That stoked his jealousies and insecurities, along with frontman Jagger stealing the spotlight from him. A monster of a man, Jones impregnated multiple teenage girls and physically and emotionally abused several women, including Pallenberg. Perhaps that\u2019s why she left him for Richards. Over time, Jones made fewer contributions in the studio and onstage, becoming a catatonic drug casualty. The Stones fired Jones in June 1969 but would have been justified doing so a couple years earlier. He drowned in his pool less than a month later.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Author Bob Spitz<\/p>\n
(Elena Seibert)<\/p>\n
Similarly, Stones lore has long romanticized the making of \u201cExile on Main Street\u201d in the stifling, dingy basement of Richards\u2019 rented Villa Nellc\u00f4te in the South of France, where the Stones had decamped to avoid British taxes. In this telling, Richards, deep in the throes of heroin addiction, somehow managed to come up with one indelible riff after another built around his signature open G tuning \u2014 taught to him by Ry Cooder \u2014 leading the band to create one of the best albums in rock history. That\u2019s not entirely accurate, according to Spitz.<\/p>\n
Yes, Richards came up with the licks for \u201cRocks Off,\u201d \u201cHappy\u201d and \u201cTumbling Dice.\u201d But it\u2019s equally true that a strung-out Richards missed myriad recording sessions, invited dealers, hangers-on and other distractions to Nellc\u00f4te, and repeatedly failed to turn up to write with Jagger. Far from completing the album in the druggy haze of a French basement, the band spent six months on overdubs at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, where Jagger contributed many of his vocals.<\/p>\n
Beatles vs. Stones<\/p>\n
One of the more interesting themes Spitz develops is the symbiotic relationship between the Beatles and Stones, with the Fab Four mostly overshadowing them \u2014 until they didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote \u201cI Wanna Be Your Man\u201d and gave it to the Stones, whose 1963 rendition, with Jones on slide guitar, became the group\u2019s first UK Top 20 hit. The Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership inspired Jagger and Richards to begin penning their own songs. In early 1964, the Beatles came to the U.S. for the first time, making television history with their appearance on \u201cThe Ed Sullivan Show\u201d and playing Carnegie Hall. A few months later, the Stones kicked off their inaugural American tour at the Swing Auditorium in San Bernardino. In 1967, the Beatles released \u201cSgt. Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band,\u201d a psychedelic masterpiece. The Stones responded with \u201cTheir Satanic Majesties Request,\u201d a psychedelic mess.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
The Rolling Stones: The Biography cover<\/p>\n
As the Beatles began to splinter, Spitz writes, the Stones sharpened their focus. The band released \u201cBeggars Banquet\u201d in late 1968 and \u201cLet It Bleed\u201d the following year, albums every bit as innovative and visionary as \u201cThe White Album\u201d and \u201cAbbey Road.\u201d For the first time, the two groups stood as equals.<\/p>\n
When the Beatles broke up in 1970, the Stones kept rolling. With Jones replaced by virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor \u2014 whose fluid, melodic style served as a tasty foil to Richards \u2014 they produced what many consider their finest works, \u201cSticky Fingers\u201d and \u201cExile on Main Street.\u201d More impressively, the band, with Taylor\u2019s successor, Ronnie Wood, has continued to dazzle audiences with incendiary live shows, touring as recently as 2024 behind the late-career triumph \u201cHackney Diamonds.\u201d The Beatles, by contrast, retired from the road in 1966 and devoted their energies to the studio.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of books have been written about the Rolling Stones, but few sparkle quite like Spitz\u2019s. For anyone who loves or even likes the Stones, it\u2019s indispensable.<\/p>\n
Like most of the band\u2019s biographers, Spitz gives short shrift to the post-\u201cExile\u201d period after 1972. He curtly dismisses 2005\u2019s strong \u201cA Bigger Bang\u201d and 2016\u2019s \u201cBlue & Lonesome,\u201d a back-to-basics album of blues covers, as \u201cadequate endeavors that signaled a band living on borrowed time.\u201d That critique is both off target and under-developed. Spitz ignores the band\u2019s legendary live album, \u201cBrussels Affair,\u201d recorded in 1973, or why the band waited decades before officially releasing it.<\/p>\n
These are small quibbles. Spitz has written a book worthy of its 704-page length; another 50 or so pages covering the later years would have made it even stronger. To quote the Rolling Stones: \u201cI know it\u2019s only rock \u2018n roll, but I like it, like it, yes, I do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Marc Ballon, a former Times, Forbes and Inc. Magazine reporter, teaches an advanced writing class at USC. He lives in Fullerton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By early 1963, the Station Hotel in London had become an epicenter of the burgeoning British blues scene.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":408344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[682,179521,93,179524,2229,179520,16234,81806,61,60,179523,102385,738,278,179522,640,18131,46954,105567],"class_list":{"0":"post-408343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-beatles","9":"tag-bob-spitz","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-exile","12":"tag-first-time","13":"tag-great-band","14":"tag-group","15":"tag-guitar","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-ireland","18":"tag-jagger","19":"tag-jones","20":"tag-month","21":"tag-music","22":"tag-richards","23":"tag-rock","24":"tag-rolling-stones","25":"tag-stone","26":"tag-stones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=408343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/408343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/408344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=408343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=408343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=408343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}