Rolling Stones Book:
Let It Bleed: The Rolling Stones Altamont and the End of the Sixties
Rolling Stones Book:
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Editorial Review: Description of Let It Bleed: The Rolling Stones, Altamont, and the End of the Sixties: The Rolling Stones Tour: 1969
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Let It Bleed: The Rolling Stones, Altamont, and the End of the Sixties Reviews:
Great photos, lame text 
2009-12-06 - Mr. Russell is a great photographer, famous in the world of rock 'n' roll and deservedly so: the photos in this book are nothing short of amazing and give a wonderful insight into what was either the first big tour of the Rolling Stones, or the last small one, depending on how you wish to see this.
The story in itself is an incredible one: these guys were inventing new-style rock 'n' roll travel on the fly. However, the pompous way in which Ethan Russell writes is -to me- disagreeable.
The amount of quotes used from Stanley Booth's SUPERB book 'True Adventures of the Rolling Stones' should serve as ample indication that Booth's book is vastly superior.
I am more than a little fascinated by the Stones from these golden years (the Mick Taylor era) and to me the book is a welcome addition to my collection (which even includes two of the 1969 see-through guitars Keith used at the time). As such, I recommend it to like-minded buyers. And again, the photos are simply stunning: some of the best I've ever seen.
For the writing, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
"Please allow me to introduce myself...." 
2009-12-04 -
As the co-author of Let It Bleed, I'd like to respond to a few things said in the reviews that strike me as either off-base or out-of-tune. Not that these reviewers can't have their opinions. After all, that's what reviews are in the main: opinions.
But as some wag once said "You've got a right to your own opinions but not your own facts." So, as the co-author, and long time friend of Ethan Russell let me say, in the spirit of the 60s, "May the Baby Jesus open your mind and shut your mouth."
One "dr. johnson" (Not I would note THE Dr. Johnson) has a problem with the cover image. He's got the purist view that a book about the 69 tour should be nailed firmly within 1969, as if time did not move on as the Stones moved on. Had he the advantage of actually reading the book he would have discovered that much of the text is a look back and a flash-forward at the same time. Indeed, there's a long "Aftermath" section that takes place in 2007. In addition, there's a lot in the book that describes why the 72 tour was the way it was as a direct consequence of the 69 tour. So it's not as if the ground wasn't laid and the text supplied so that an astute reader would not grasp that fact.
But, as I said before, reviewing the book only from the pictures available at Amazon and (perhaps [...]) puts our lower-case dr johnson at a distinct disadvantage so I shall extend slack to a man obviously working with a very limited set of tools.
As to the "anachronistic" chapter heading of "Start Me Up," I recall that that heading was applied to the chapter in which the tour starts and, since it is also a title of a popular Stones song of the era, is perhaps not entirely out of place.
"dr johnson's" call for "intelligent editing" is puzzling to me. As a book editor with more than 200 books to my credit, not to mention well over 1,000 magazine articles, I think I can spot editing that is not up to snuff. Nothing I saw of the editing process for this book (and I saw it all) struck me as anything other than spotlessly professional. Perhaps if dr johnson were to mark up a copy and send it on I could see more clearly what penetrating editorial insights he would propose.
Finally it would seem that dr johnson -- in pointing out the production of the $650 limited edition having be produced in China -- is dismally lacking in a clue as to the economic state of the global book industry in 2009. I would only remark that fully 90+% of all elaborate book packages today are manufactured in China because of that nation's ability to produce the quality required at a price that makes sense to the publisher. It's called "market forces" in a "capitalist economy." There are books on these two arcane subjects available here on Amazon and I commend them to dr johnson. The "Complete Idiots" and "For Dummies" lines are a good place to start.
Moving on to the strange and hostile remarks of the reviewer who names him/herself "Music Listener" I must say I am filled with both befuddlement and inertia. We seem to be treated at the outset to an anecdote concerning Keith Richards which doesn't hold up under a moment's reflection. Has the decades long Rolling Stones enterprises purchased houses for many people in London? Doubtless it has, but really so what. Wal-Mart has purchased houses for many people in Houston but that surely is unremarkable.
Why now for the book? 40th anniversary comes to mind. Happens all the time in books, movies, music, and politics. Another unremarkable observation posing as insight.
Where "Music Listener" goes off the rails and into the ditch of his or her own darkness comes when the all-knowing "many reasons; alimony payments, retirement money, spoiled children" is trotted out. Surely this is something beneath the common decency of most people if not that of "Music Listener;" a person strangely out of tune with simple courtesy. It has the added disadvantages of lacking substance as well as insight. Perhaps we are meant to think that this simple fan in an industry "insider."
As a long time friend -- and without being too intrusive into Mr. Russell's personal life -- I can assure "Music Listener" that there are no alimony payments, retirement needs, or spoiled children in Russell's life. Those are simply facts and you'll just have to take my word for it. Why anyone with no knowledge might intimate that there were can only be explained by the psychotherapeutic notion of "transference."
"Music Listener" is "shocked, shocked" that Let It Bleed was published because there is a market and an audience for it? Well, I hope so since otherwise we'd all be thrust back on slim volumes of poesy and the pallid output of vanity presses. To quote the real Dr. Johnson, who knew a few things about books and writers, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
From that point "Music Listener" takes us on a whirlwind tour of his or her versions of what happened in the Sixties with the startling observation that they "never existed." As one who lived through and beyond the Sixties I can only conclude that what absolutely did not exist in the Sixties was "Music Listener." I think all of the currently living Baby Boomers to back me up. At least those not currently institutionalized for delusional thinking.
For the rest of it, we merely see "Music Listener" displaying whatever remnants of anecdotes his or her mind retains about the Stones. Not, one would note, evidence of an understanding either encyclopedic or scholarly. (In passing I would advise "Music Listener" that one does not own a "Copywrite" but rather the right to copy with a "Copyright." One can, however, become -- with a lot of practice -- a "copywriter," but that's not a career path I would suggest to "Music Listener" as long as there are opportunities in the repair of commercial air-conditioning units.)
As for our resident expert in photography, eastriver anonymousLOTSOFNUMBERS, what can one say other than..... "sigh."
There are really not enough words to describe how wrong this ham-handed and gobstoppered tour of the aesthetics of photography really are. Suffice it to say that it is so wrong it does not even rise to the level of wrong. (We'll go into the techniques of shooting "available light" with 400ASA film and having to push the film back in the stone ages before digital photography another time.)
Overall, it should suffice to note that Mr. Russell made and sustained a good and solid living for decades in this very tough field and was, for a very long time, the friend and photographer of choice for the Stones, the Beatles, the Who and dozens of others. I don't know where eastriver has been spending the last few decades, but most people know that stars of major stature in the rock world don't just let anyone hang out with them and produce their album covers and their images unless they are confident in that person's skills.
Here's what some have said about Russell's work:
ANNIE LEIBOVITZ
It is important this work gets to be seen. Ethan was doing something no other photographer was doing at the time.
BILL WYMAN
Ethan Russell has taken some of the greatest pictures in rock roll.... maybe the greatest ever.
PETE TOWNSHEND
Ethan Russell was a sheer joy to work with.... his contributions were poetic and dramatic.....Most important of all, his photographs were what I would call fine...they felt like the classics of Paul Strand, ready to put up in the National Gallery. As an artist himself, Ethan is the civilized eye on an uncivilized art-form.
ROSANNE CASH
Ethan Russell is old school in the best sense of the word: he has true talent, he has a painterly eye, he respects himself and his clients, and he's interested in finding the truth in every photographic situation. Actually, he's interested in finding the truth whether the camera is turned on or not.
If that's not enough for you to know what sort of photographer Russell is not only can I not help you, God can't help you.
Admittedly, he's my friend and I'm the co-author of the book as well as someone who lived through the times the book chronicles. I confess that gives me a certain biased an slanted view, but it also gives me standing. Why? Because unlike some here I actually know what I'm talking about.
Good, But Could Have Been Better
2009-11-26 - Keith Richard once famously said that everywhere he drove in London, he saw houses that he and his band had purchased for people. With this book, Mr. Russell joins that group. The tour which forms the subject matter of this book happened forty years ago. Why bring out the book now? Okay, there are many reasons; alimony payments, retirement money, spoiled children who never learned to take care of themselves, etc. Probably the best reason, at least from a commercial standpoint, is that there appears to be an audience. People will actually buy the book. As to the book itself, it comprises numerous photographs, some better than others, that document which was probably the best rock band tour, ever. It was certainly the most infamous. Is this a book that will appeal to the casual reader? Of course not. The book is meant to preach to the converted. Was Altamont truly the end of the Sixties? No. The Sixties, as that weighted word has come to mean, never existed. Altamont was simply business as usual. That a person was murdered in a crowd of some 300,000 people is not surprising. Indeed, given the potential for violence in a crowd that size without adequate food, water, sanitation, etc., the surprise is that more people were not murdered. I concur with one reviewer who complained that the photograph on the cover was from the 1972 tour. Actually, the photograph was taken at the Benefit for Nicaraguan Earthquake Relief the Rolling Stones staged at the Los Angeles Forum on January 18, 1973, a good three years after the 1969 tour ended. Parenthetically, at the time, Mick was married to Bianca who, besides cocaine, may be Nicaragua's most famous export, or at least expat. The reviewer's complaint, however, is well-taken; the choice of the photograph shows a certain lack of care on Mr. Russell's part. I suspect it was used because it is dramatic and, more importantly, Mr. Russell still owned the copyright on it. In short, the book is good, but could have been better. Mr. Russell was fortunate enough to have been in the right place at the right time. Perhaps somebody could have done a better job, but we will never know.
Dissappointing 
2009-11-19 - This book is a dissappointment. The photography on display here is very poor, even by amateur standards. One can only conclude when looking through this book that the photographer did not have even a basic grasp of the technical aspects of photography. This is not Robert Frank or Annie Leibovitz. This is just crap, mostly, with a few good shots that are good only because the subject matter is interesting and luckily the aperture and shutter speed were set appropriately for the situation (e.g. Mick talking to B. B. King while Keith tunes up in the unfocused background).
There is no excuse, other than incompetence, for a posed picture to be out of focus, poorly composed, and poorly lit. Even given the fact that much of the content here is photojournalism and shot under conditions not conducive to high quality, well-composed pictures, there is still a troubling lack of technical mastery of the camera (e.g. blurry, shakey, uncomposed pictures of the band walking off stage - something that happens every night of the tour under similiar lighting situations - why not have the camera set properly and waiting? - so we can at least have artistic blur).
The only good pictures here (apparently good by shear accident) have already been sold and resold to the point that any Stone's fan, and even the general public, has seen them ad nauseum. There is no reason to buy this book. This book is just another cash-in by a lucky bugger who happened to be in the right place at the right time with a camera he barely understood how to use and is now releasing the dregs of his output to make a little money. One can almost imagine him going through his formerly discarded negatives saying, "There's got to be something here I can touch up a bit, recrop, and sell."
Having said that, I give it 2 stars instead of 1 because some of the writing in the book is mildly interesting, primarily because the time period covered is interesting. But again, this stuff has been covered ad infinitum. As we all know by now, this was a transitional period. By the end of this tour pop music had changed for ever. After 1969 few rock bands traveled coach or stood around rental car agencies waiting for a car. Rock bands became professionally managed life-style bands with carefully protected, and projected, images of bimbouse and limouse.
It is hard to believe now-a-days that pop stars with the string of hit records that the Stones already had behind them by 1969 were still economicly only upper-middle class. sigh. Gone are the days of 90% tax brackets and good well funded public schools, public hospitals, public highways,...... But I digress.
Could have been better
2009-11-05 - Crammed with memorable photos, this book is certainly worth the 23.00 price. But the editing is lousy. For example why have a picture from the 1972 tour on the cover of a book about the 1969 tour ??? I mean from the thousands of photos the author took on this tour, couldn't he have found one shot that would have worked for the front cover ??? The equivalent would be writing a book on the 69 Mets and having a cover shot of the 73 Mets. Does NOT make any sense. And there are more 72 tour photos that just do not belong here. I would add that some of the chapter headings are very hoaky like "Start me up". I found these anachronisms irritating. In short, it is a good book but could have been MUCH better with some intelligent editing. Still better to buy this than shell out 650.00 for pretty much the same book ( printed in China I would add) on the author's website.
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Rolling Stones book:
'Let It Bleed: The Rolling Stones Altamont and the End of the Sixties'