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List Price: $15.95 | | Publisher: Chronicle Books
Salesrank: 113658
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| Our Price: $3.49 |
| Used Price: $7.99 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
For the first time in paperback—and in a great reading edition—here is the real story of the Rolling Stones, as told by the Stones themselves. In their own words, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood get right to the heart of what makes the Stones the Stones, as musicians, songwriters, and performers, describing how their music has evolved, and revealing frankly how their own lives have helped or hindered their music-making. The Stones' own stories are complemented by insider reflections from key players in their story over the years. Also included are 64 pages of vintage photographs. 'For fans, here's proof that you can sometimes get what you want.' (People)
Description of According to the Rolling Stones:
According to the Rolling Stones hews closely to the formula set in 2000 by the publication of The Beatles Anthology. Like its predecessor, it's a beautiful coffee table tome with hundreds of gorgeous photographs, from childhood pics of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to concert shots from the 40 Licks Tour. The text is taken from recent interviews with the band's four latter-day members (Mick, Keith, Charlie Watts, and Ronnie Wood). Notably missing, however, is any contribution from former bassist Bill Wyman, who left the band in the early '90s and published his own history of the band in 2002, Rolling with the Stones. Where Wyman is an obsessive collector and diarist, the other Stones are more impressionistic in their memories, lending an approach to history as casual as the band’s concerts are rigorously planned and staged.
The first half of the Stones story has plenty of high drama (tours through the segregated South, Brian Jones's death, Altamont), which no one seems eager to reflect on deeply. (Charlie is the only one even to mention Altamont.) The more recent years has seen a long string of ever-more-successful tours and ever-less-popular albums, interrupted only by Mick and Keith’s near divorce in the '80s, plus rehab stints for Charlie and Ronnie. While The Beatles Anthology offered the surviving members' interpretations of their experiences at a distance of 30 or more years, the Stones are still living the tale they're trying to tell--and they aren’t always the most self-aware narrators. Or generous: Wyman's three-decade tenure is given short shrift, but the book finds enough space for some unnecessary digs (Wyman has "tiny hands," we're told, and an "almost effeminate" style of playing).
To flesh out the band members' own recollections, the book also contains 13 essays from music-industry friends (Ahmet Ertegun, Marshall Chess), collaborators (Don Was), famous fans (Sheryl Crow, novelist Carl Hiaasen), and, yes, even the band's financial advisor for the past 33 years, Prince Rupert Lowenstein. Their views are sometimes fascinating (the unvarnished perspective of Crawdaddy Club owner Giorgio Gomelsky, the well-told stories of art bon vivant Christopher Gibbs), but just as often self-indulgent or sycophantic. Fans looking for an artfully designed volume of photos spanning the Stones' career won't be disappointed. Anyone seeking a comprehensive history of the band may want to wait for the band's definitive biography, which has attempted many times but has yet to be written. --Keith Moerer
According to the Rolling Stones Reviews:
music books 
2007-03-10 - Great for avid fans. Lots of never before seen pics. Lot's of pics of the 'author' as a young man.
Unbelievable book! 
2005-06-23 - This $40.00 book is full of incredible images and stories. A must for the serious Rolling Stones fan.
Great story of 4 rockers and 3 invisible elephants 
2004-11-07 - This book makes for more than just a nice coffee table book. It's got more than cool shots (a good many of them posed for) and interesting tales of the band by its four remaining members (and a host of interviews by collaborators, fans and close friends). What's missing from the book almost speaks louder than wha'ts in it. It is inevitable to stumble upon the absence of ANY quotes from the late Brian Jones, his substitute Mick Taylor or the former bass player Bill Wyman. It's the proverbial invisible elephant in the room! Let's face it: the book is more about the vibe and chemistry that kept the surviving members together through the years. Those left behind (like Wyman) have only themselves or their legends to speak for them. Because of this, I take a star off my rating, and leave it still at a good four stars, because it is still a nice document.
"Little More Gloss on those Red Lips, Please"
2004-09-11 - The Stones and the PR industry get along very well. The relationship could be summed up by a London tabloid in the headline, "Stones + PR = Hot and Heavy"
To the Stones, the PR industry is a young professional woman, like one from a Brooks Brothers catalog, wearing a lightweight sweater of elastic, ribbed grey wool over a smile-inducing bust just a little bit larger than one would expect. And the PR industry returns the favor, shining its most flattering light on these four sexagenarians, doing its best work for them. This is an interesting book, just as the bright young lass posited above, is an object of above average interest. One reads with willing eyes, but one also sees, in the way the book reproduces the quotes from the documentary included with the DVD set `Four Flicks,' that a lot of work has been put into polishing the apple. Newsflash: the Stones don't actually talk like that. What look like off the cuff remarks on the DVD are actually set pieces based on the silky quotations crafted for the book. I can't knock it. Darn, I know magazine covers are air-brushed, but I look anyway.
It's a way better book, even if it serves up the Stones like jelly on crumpets, than Wyman's "Rolling with the Stones," which, in comparison, is a view of the Stones from the position of one locked in the rumble seat. He was there, but I think all he did was collect receipts and make diary entries.
The Stones prove themselves not above trading on their legend and even sugar-coating it a little; you can't tell if they hold their noses while keeping up appearances, but I think they do it at Jagger's behest, knowing that it must be if they're to stay in the business they love so well. I've focused my listening energies on the Stones for a about a year now, so I forgive them for the top-dressing, because over time, I have found in their music an eerie combination of the utterly ordinary and completely magical -- everything that anyone's said about them is true -- and this combination is evidence that they do fight the good battle everytime they collectively pick up their instruments to create music. This is why I believe the Stones are the genuine article, authentic (authentic in italics), as the book's sources describe them. It's in the bones, as Keith says, but in saying that, he's just saying it's in all our bones to try hard and even win sometimes.
P.S. I'm authentic too, so why ain't I rich? Because I never mastered PR, not the way the Stones do it. As Bill Clinton might have said, "It's the PR, Stupid."
Closer to the truth
2004-09-02 - This book is great if you are looking for the driving force behind their rise to fame and stardom. After reading 'The Stones' by Philip Norman, which is a very informative and researched book, and well worth a read , this is very refreshing. It lets you into the minds of the Stones. As soon as you read it, you get an understanding of the obsession with music Mick, Keith and Charlie had. Their relationships and differences, not blurred by third hand news. After reading this, I thought, hell, I cant blame them for living rock 'n' roll. They were in the right place and right time, and by their accounts, they still cant believe where it has led them!!
Good beach or train reading. And Keith is also a pretty good story teller!
