The Rolling Stones: The Biography - Hardcover

Spitz, Bob

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593489098 ISBN 13: 9780593489093

Verlag: Penguin Press, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

“A magisterial work that charts the 60-year journey of ‘the greatest rock and roll band in the world.’ . . . Hundreds of books have been written about the Rolling Stones, but few sparkle quite like Spitz’s. For anyone who loves or even likes the Stones, it’s indispensable.” —Los Angeles Times

All great music is a threat.

What left is there to say about The Rolling Stones? A hell of a lot, it turns out.

Bob Spitz has brought his indefatigable energy and five decades of experiences in the fields and hollows of rock 'n’ roll to bear on his five-year journey to reexamine one of popular music’s greatest stories. There are myriad revisions to the conventional narrative which underscore just how in control of that narrative the band has been up to now—small example: no, Muddy Waters was not mopping the floors at Chess Records when the Stones showed up. But in a larger sense, as with the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, Spitz’s greatest gift is for the big picture. He knows where the magic is, and why it is. He is as clear-eyed a connoisseur of the show business, the spectacle and the collateral damage of this whirlwind as anyone alive, and that lucid gaze pierces a lot of incrusted bullshit, but the ultimate goal is to connect with a creative force whose power shows no signs of fading, over sixty years on.

At its heart the story is about two boys, Mick and Keith, and their unique, fraught, alchemical bond, often tested, never sundered. The Glimmer Twins. The bandmates, like Charlie Watts, who found their groove in relation to this double star made the trip intact, while those who struggled, like Brian Jones and Mick Taylor, were chewed up and spit out. This is a story with many dark corners, including a surprising number of deaths. But whether Jagger and Richards sold their souls to the devil is at the crossroads for blues greatness or just squeezed their heroes for every drop of inspiration, in the end their connection to their music and to each other put them in a category of one, where they very much remain.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Bob Spitz is the award-winning author of The Beatles and Led Zeppelin: The Biography as well as ten other works of non-fiction. His best-selling book Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child has been made into a documentary and will open as a play called The Recipe early next year. A lifelong musician, Spitz helped manage Bruce Springsteen and Elton John at crucial points in their careers. He lives in New York City and Los Angeles

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Chapter One

The Blues Brothers

Keith was born my brother by accident by different parents.

-Mick Jagger

He's a smart little motherfucker, I'll give him that.

-Keith Richards

Michael Philip Jagger's situation was complicated. There were expectations weighing on his shoulders. Born July 26, 1943, in an England under attack, Mike, as he was known, was vessel for the Jagger family's hopes of an upwardly mobile trajectory. His parents, Joe and Eva, had already crossed the tracks from a working-class Dartford subdivision to one of the borough's posher new enclaves called the Close, sporting single-family homes and big backyards. Eva, a clever housewife, sold Avon beauty products to boost the family income. Joe, in a few high-flying years, had leapfrogged from high school gym teacher to lecturer at St. Mary's College and television sports guru, establishing his bona fides as one of England's preeminent fitness experts. He was grooming Mike to follow in his footsteps.

Joe and Mike were an early television tag team. Viewers tuned in regularly to watch their routines. When there was an exercise to demonstrate, Joe had Mike spring into action and perform twenty jumping jacks, or press a hundred pounds, or chin a bar. The kid was a natural. He not only handled anything Joe threw at him but turned on the charm.

Mike had all the tools necessary to leap social classes in a single bound. He played cricket, rugby, basketball, and tennis. He excelled at track, threw the javelin, undertook a taxing daily regimen of push-ups and sit-ups. Academically, he was a decent, if lazy, student-he graduated twelfth in a class of twenty-five-more intuitive than intellectual. Friends considered him outgoing. And he had spunk.

"I didn't have any inhibitions," he recalled. Even as a kid, at fifteen or sixteen, he'd front a little pop combo and "do mad things," raising the heat in a local auditorium by dropping to his knees and rolling on the ground in some weird mash-up of Johnnie Ray and Bruno Sammartino. Audiences were shocked at first-he could see it in their faces-but they ate it up, save for two stony-eyed observers who patrolled the back aisles of his performances. "My parents were extremely disapproving of it all," he remembered; "it was just not done" in polite company. The music and behavior were "for very low-class people."

Keeping up appearances generally meant conformity in 1950s Britain, but Mike had his own ideas. Image was a contrivance he played with from the outset. It didn't matter if he was on a stage or running the quarter mile for Dartford Grammar. "I thought, 'Sod how we did in competition.' My first thought was: 'How does my hair look?'"

This was one strange boy. There were time-honored formalities in place to preserve the status quo. Etiquette to be adhered to and respected. But Mike Jagger was already pushing at boundaries, testing his elders, trying on various identities for size. He was content either to sing as part of a choir, until his voice broke, or to make a complete fool of himself in front of twenty people. He flouted Dartford Grammar's faux-Etonian dress code by wearing casual clothes, he challenged the headmaster, ignored the school's mandate to join the militaristic Combined Cadet Force, and was initiated into sexual experience with a boy.

And he listened to music. Not those insipid pop hits of the day on the BBC's Light Programme, but that vulgar stuff corrupting British teenagers that streamed over Radio Luxembourg and Armed Forces Radio. He fancied the bad boys-Eddie Cochran, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley. And those Black musicians with their wild sorties-"Who Do You Love?" I'm Your "Hoochie Coochie Man," and "Mannish Boy." A cook at a nearby U.S. Army base, where Mike volunteered as a fitness instructor, had an extraordinary record collection: Lead Belly, Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, and Muddy Waters. It was a revelation. The Black man's music! He was hooked, he couldn't get enough of it.

Mike Jagger was walking a fine line. He strove to please his parents, whom he adored and respected, but he was struggling to meet their expectations and still be his own man. His father didn't give him an inch. Even though Mike got seven O levels and three A level passes-the equivalent of college advance placement courses-Joe was never satisfied. "Get on your homework," he bellowed whenever the music-"jungle music," Joe called it-came wafting from behind Mike's bedroom door. Joe hounded him about exercising, to get in shape, to stay fit. "He couldn't go anywhere without his father shouting that he needed to do his weights or push-ups," recalled Dick Taylor, another music junkie who lived nearby in Dartford. It was a constant struggle.

Especially considering Mike's circumstances at LSE. He'd nabbed a coveted scholarship that gave him a weekly stipend of £7 to cover expenses. Plus, there were perks. Enrollment there conferred a certain status. A long line of dignitaries had risen from the school's storied ranks. Bertrand Russell and John Maynard Keynes dropped in to lecture. A degree got you a ticket to the English middle class. But Mike constantly wrestled with the relevance of his education. He couldn't square the work and effort with where it was leading.

"When I was twelve or thirteen, I was thinking of becoming a journalist," he recalled. "Then I was imagining that I was going to be in some form of government, because I was interested in macroeconomics, how government influenced the economy." But now music had intruded. Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley-another new, fantastic discovery almost every week.

Friday afternoons, while his LSE classmates grabbed lunch, Mike spent the hour around the corner from school, in the basement of Dobells, a mostly jazz-oriented record shop, scavenging among the dusty bins of album rejects hoping to unearth anything that looked like an authentic blues gem. The exotic labels were catnip: Aladdin, Duke, Modern, Excello, Specialty. He'd chase anything down that gave off a whiff of authentic blues.

The so-called bands Mike fronted offered little inspiration. "I was in loads of skiffle groups," he said, joining the fad of folk-music enthusiasts. He'd busk with his mate Dick Taylor or any number of public school minstrels who bashed away on their homemade instruments with joie de vivre and little else. And even though another band from Dartford Grammar, the Southerners, nabbed a prestigious TV gig, skiffle soon wore out its welcome. There were only so many times one could sing "Rock Island Line" or "Pick a Bale of Cotton."

After Mike saw Buddy Holly perform, his taste evolved into a steady diet of rock 'n roll. Mike auditioned to sing with a band made up of friends he'd known from primary school, but they were appalled by his offbeat voice. Instead, he, Dick Taylor, and two other schoolmates, Bob Beckwith and Alan Etherington, set up shop and ran through every rock 'n roll song they could think of-always including "La Bamba."

Eventually, they made it official, calling themselves a band: Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. There were no gigs; gigs never entered their minds. It was enough to play as an ensemble in Dick Taylor's back garden or at Alan Etherington's house. The band's equipment was an assemblage of spare parts. Dick inherited a drum kit of the tin-can variety. No amplifiers figured in the equation, but a Grundig radiogram-one of those boxy wooden radio/gramophone players that occupied the corners of most British living rooms-had a jack and enough wattage to produce a suitable squawk. Bob and Alan took turns plugging their guitars into it, forcing Mike, sans microphone, to project his voice over the clatter.

There was never any question who would handle the vocals. Mike, who played no instrument, simply assumed...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2026
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593489098
• ISBN 13: 9780593489093
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 704
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Van Ditmar Boeken, VDB Sales; sales@vanditmar.nl; ; Hondiuslaan 44; Utrecht; 3528 AB; Niederlande