TWO BOOKS IN ONE, OR "THE SUN, AND THE MOON AND THE ROLLING STONES"

I picked this years ago, thinking, "Dude follows the Stones on tour - awesome!" Then I saw the tour was 1994 and put it back. If I'm gonna read about the Rolling Stones, I'm gonna read about them in the '70s when tours were all jam-packed with debauchery and craziness and drugs. Then it came through work a couple days after drummer Charlie Watts died and I decided to give it a chance.*

Rolling Stone writer Rich Cohen was embedded with the band as they practiced and played a few intimate shows to get their chops back for their upcoming '94 American tour. Cohen is a fan and viewed this as the gig of a lifetime, but was also leery - 30 years from their formation, was the band more corporation than musical group?

At least, that's what I thought at first, and that's what the first few chapters detail. Then there's a swerve and the bulk of the book is taken up with a history of the band, which was done well, but it's nothing a fan hasn't heard before. Although, man, Brian Jones sounds like a dick, and there's a funny contemporary review of their first show which relied on American blues covers: "Well-meaning but interminable songs about sharecroppers."

Man, there are some ugly Rolling Stones cartoons.

Then we're back to practices and trying to get next to the personalities behind the Stones. Cohen does as well as could be expected - Keith Richards seems exactly like you'd think, Mick Jagger is guarded, Charlie Watts seems above all the drama, concerned with jazz and clothes and providing the beat.  Cohen is under no illusion that he's anything more than a journalist there to provide good copy, but he did get close enough to Jagger that they became partners in the terrible HBO series "Vinyl."** 

There's an interesting tangent in the beginning about how the Stones and their contemporaries grew up in post-war UK squalor and were able to transcend the silly class system to become the new nobility, and how there was no real plan to have a band as a decades-long career, and how the notion of a rock star was pretty much being made up as it happened. That, to me, seems like a great premise for a book.

The overall effect is that Cohen didn't have enough info from the practices and tours for a book so he crafted a history to increase page length. Then again, I felt the last book I reviewed had a similar problem, so it's entirely possible that the problem is with me. 

Sex/Drugs/Bad Behavior:
8/10 It's a history of the Rolling Stones. Brian Jones and Keith Richards alone did enough drugs to power several lesser bands.

You Might Remember Me From, or, My Totally Biased View of the Subject's Best Stuff:
You certainly don't need me to tell you about the Rolling Stones, unless you lived in a cave or grew up Amish or something. Cohen argues their string of great albums began with "Beggar's Banquet" and made it up to "Some Girls," with a couple misfires in there. I'd pretty much agree, although I have a soft spot for "Their Satanic Majesties Request," and "Tattoo You," mostly because I got it for my 14th birthday. I also like "Undercover," again, probably because of the age when I heard it, and I have a love for classic rock bands dabbling in new wave influences.

Percentage of Music in the Bio:
Let's say 60 percent. Lots of talk about the bands' influences, as well as some discussion on how the songs are constructed without bogging down in technical details.

Could We Hang?
Probably not. Although they seem friendly enough in Cohen's recounting, the Rolling Stones exist on a totally different plane than plebes like us. 

Buy, Borrow from the Library, or Pass:
It's a nice read, but not really essential. Borrow.


*Between Watts and Lee "Scratch" Perry dying within days of each other, the influences behind about 60 percent of the music I listen to died.


** Seriously - Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese teaming up for a show about '70s rock music? How could that be as bad as it was?