Books: "The Rolling Stones: The Biography," By Bob Spitz

 

The Rolling Stones: The Biography

By Bob Spitz

Penguin Press; hardcover, 704 pages; $38.00

Bob Spitz is a longtime musician who helped manage Bruce Springsteen and Elton John at pivotal moments in their careers. He is more likely known as the award-winning author of epic books on music, The Beatles and Led Zeppelin: The Biography, in addition to ten other works of non-fiction. His best-selling book Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child has been made into a documentary and is set to open as a play called The Recipe in early 2027.

Now, Spitz has taken his unparalleled biographical lens and put it on another legendary group in a class of its own in The Rolling Stones: The Biography. It is the product of five years of examining the stories that have comprised their six-decade run at the pinnacle of pop music.

At the heart of it all is the pair that has been the constant as the band has evolved, right up to the present day when they introduced their latest album in Brooklyn this past spring, and that is Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

Though they had kind of known each other as children, Spitz traces the real start of their friendship to October 17, 1961, when they were at a train station.

"Their individual appearances establish them in distinctly different orbits," Spitz writes. "One boy, something of a lad at first glance, appears more polished in a beige cardigan and a scarf adorned with black, purple, and yellow stripes that identifies him as a student at the London School of Economics. Though an unmistakable representative of the university herd, there is nothing generic about his features. There are traces of the Orient and maybe Mars in his almond-shaped eyes, cheekbones from here to there, and good strong jaw. And the mouth. It is almost cartoonish, as if it were drawn for the Joker, with lips that look like they've been inflated with helium.

"The other boy, by comparison, looks more pedestrian, someone with airs might say 'common,' indisputably working class. He is an odd one - 'a skinny lad with the crazy eyes' and protruding ears - but prone to flash a quick, wolfish smile. There's a bit of a rebel in his countenance, a budding Rocker look, dressed as he is in a lavender shirt beneath a Wrangler vest and a pair of black drainpipes. Scuffled, sharp-toes winklepickers are a dead giveaway...

"'Hi, man,' Keith Richards, the scruffier one, says. 'Where ya going?' Before he gets a response, his eyes zoom toward a cache of record albums tucked under the other guy's arm. R&B albums! The one on top is a gem, Rockin' at the Hops. 'You're into Chuck Berry, man, really?' Another album slides out of the pack like the reveal card in a magician's trick. The Best of Muddy Waters. Presto! These aren't any old records. They're Chess Records...

"The LSE student, Mike - yes, Mike - Jagger, had gotten his hands on a catalogue. 'I wrote away to Chess Records mail order,' he says. He'd come across the company's Chicago address in a magazine and began sending off for records that were touted as essential, none of which were available in England."

By the start of 1962, Mick and Keith were nearly inseparable, with each of them basically living in the other's house. They practiced for hours, with Mick singing and Keith playing guitar, as they sought to broaden their reportoire.

They loved rock and roll, but really wanted to work the blues in, and after it was clear the third member of the group, Dick Taylor, wasn't much interested in that, they started to hit up jazz clubs. It wasn't long before they met Brian Jones, who was in an Oxford-based blues band called Thunder Odin's Big Secret with his brother, Paul. 

Jones was performing as "Elmo Lewis," and when he did a meticulous version of Robert Johnson's "Dust My Broom," Richards knew they found their man. Jones was a character unto himself, as he grew up in Cheltenham and defied social conventions with his affinity for Black music. The interesting thing was how Jones became the leader of their burgeoning new band, which eventually included drummer Charlie Watts, another jazz lover.

Soon enough, well-known promoter Giorgio Gomelsky took them under their wing, as he booked them any gig they could find, at the Stones' urging, right up to when they were at the Station Hotel on Sunday, February 23, 1963. That was known as the place to see up-and-coming bands, and it was set to air on the BBC, but what threw it off was that London was experiencing an incredibly rare snowstorm.

The Stones delivered a performance in which it all came together.  Spitz writes that "Brian and Keith synchronized their instruments seamlessly 'like strands of barbed wire,' an observer would later note - Richards slashing and stinging, Jones probing around the seams - blending and even swapping sounds so that the lead and rhythm parts were in the zone, almost indistinguishable," and that "Charlie Watts managed to synthesize the band's mongrel mash-up of blues and rock 'n roll. Watts played with a steadfast subtlety and exquisite feel."

They drew steadily larger crowds within two weeks of their BBC appearance, and by June 1964, the Stones was set for a trip to New York City, just four months after The Beatles made the trek here, but their experience started off a bit differently.

They were given a health check by immigration officials when they arrived, sparked by a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette headline that described them as "dirtier, wilder, freakier, more disheveled" than the cleaned-up Beatles, and the press conference they endured was, as Spitz put it, "more condescending than what the Beatles were put through."

The description of the Stones' trip to New York was superb, as it's likely the first time most people are reading about it. Legendary New York deejay Murray the K, the last of his kind, a holdover from the doowop era, interviewed them on WINS and gave them the same introduction to the city as he did The Beatles.

The Stones were here for just three days and spent a lot of their time sightseeing. Jagger couldn't get over how everything was open all night, and  Watts went straight to the city's noted jazz clubs. They then were off to the West Coast, which was where their tour began, and one of the interesting bits of minutiae Spitz puts in here, they were greeted by Phil Spector's promotions man, Sonny Bono.

That is just the tip of what a rewarding read this is, a worthy addition to Spitz's canon of biographies. Longtime Stones fans and younger generations just learning about them will equally appreciate the journey documented here.