Book review: 'The Rolling Stones: 50 Years'

Book: The Rolling Stones: 50 Years
Author: Christopher Sandford
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 481
Price: Rs599

There isn’t much that hasn’t been written or said about The Rolling Stones. But there isn’t enough either. They’re a bunch of wizened men, churning out hits from decades ago, but rather than cruel criticism or even plain dismissal, The Stones evoke nostalgia and fondness even today. As author Christopher Sandford observes in The Rolling Stones: 50 Years, the music is only a part of the appeal. In this biography, Sandford tracks the band through five decades, from their creative growth in the 1960s, through the dangerous decadence of the 1970s, the tours and monetary windfall of the ’80s and ’90s, to grandkids, awards and even a knighthood in the 21st century.

In 1961, Mick Jagger, a student at London School of Economics, met Keith Richards, lugging his guitar, “emerging out of the depths of the fog” at a train station. They, like the rest of their band mates, were middle-class kids; hardly likely to develop an anti-establishment image or be the ones that “tore down the Berlin Wall”, as Richards would remark later. By the time The Stones performed in Prague in 1990, their iconic tongue logo was erected in a spot previously occupied by a statue of Stalin.

The years in between saw The Stones on a rollercoaster ride through drug busts and arrests, sexual liaisons and marital breakups, trashed hotels and chateaus, tax exile, the death of a band member and a political scandal in Canada.

Sandford’s storytelling is breezy but perceptive. Take, for example, the 1975 “audition” of 23-year-old guitarist, Wayne Perkins: “...Anita carried around an antique tray heaped with coke as if serving tea and biscuits, and other guests involved various Stones and Faces, as well as David Bowie, Gary Glitter and someone recalled as a ‘Jamaican male ballet dancer’ who amused Mick. At eight one evening, Keith and Wayne set out for a ‘quick drink’ that lasted until 5am... Perkins found himself in the passenger seat of the yellow Ferrari, barrelling down Richmond Hill with his host ‘doing the usual 90mph, wearing shades, leaning on the horn as we sped through a series of lights’... Around breakfast time, Keith disappeared down the road with [his son] Marlon, mentioning something about putting the 5-year-old to bed... Next day, back at the Wick, Keith told him to learn the Stones catalogue. ‘We’re going on tour.’”  

Incidentally, Perkins didn’t make the cut but he did get a whiff of the madness of the Rolling Stones.

The underlying thread in the book is the rivalry between Jagger and Richards, the band’s creative nucleus. There were long periods when the two didn’t talk to each other, except to “grunt” during recordings or air their views in the press. As the years, and pages, go by, Jagger – whom a university professor said could be “shy, polite and intelligent one day, a cocky sod the next” — emerges as an exceptional performer, a volatile person and a shrewd businessman, while Richards is the eccentric but intelligent, drugged-out rock star.

Sandford — who has also written biographies of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Eric Clapton and David Bowie — manages to give a sense of each of the ‘characters’ as well as the comical outrageousness of it all. He describes an incident in which Jagger, drunk, telephoned Charlie Watts’s hotel room in the middle of the night, asking, “Where’s my drummer?” Watts rose from bed, showered and shaved, dressed himself in a three-piece suit, then took the lift downstairs, punched Jagger in the face and told him, “Don’t ever call me your drummer again. You’re my f***ing singer!”

This isn’t the story of the world’s greatest rock band told through the eyes of a fan. It’s a fun, insightful and ultimately satisfying peek into the world of rock stars and their music.