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List Price: $16.95 | | Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Salesrank: 17968
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| Our Price: $9.99 |
| Used Price: $10.00 |
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| Media: Paperback |
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Editorial Review:
Stanley Booth, a member of the Rolling Stones' inner circle, met the band just a few months before Brian Jones drowned in a swimming pool in 1969. He lived with them throughout their 1969 American tour, staying up all night together listening to blues, talking about music, ingesting drugs, and consorting with groupies. His thrilling account culminates with their final concert at Altamont Speedway-a nightmare of beating, stabbing, and killing that would signal the end of a generation's dreams of peace and freedom. But while this book renders in fine detail the entire history of the Stones, paying special attention to the tragedy of Brian Jones, it is about much more than a writer and a rock band. It has been called-by Harold Brodkey and Robert Stone, among others-the best book ever written about the sixties. In Booth's new afterword, he finally explains why it took him 15 years to write the book, relating an astonishing story of drugs, jails, and disasters.
The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones Reviews:
Best Rock Book, Period 
2009-10-10 - This amazingly literate tome by Stanley Booth is the story of the Rolling Stones legendary 1969 tour, ending with the show that ended the '60s with a loud disgusting thud, like a dead body hitting cement ... Altamount. But the book is more than a travel journal, though it is that in part. It is a history of the Rolling Stones and a bit of history of Stanley Booth too, but his story is told more cryptically than the stones mainly because we have no basis from which to work when Booth is describing people in his life ... a life that had recently fallen apart.
The writing of the book, as he outlines near the beginning, almost killed him. Aside from developing a healthy drug habit and co-shooting with the 'world's most elegantly wasted human being', Keith Richards, he also managed to break his back ... among other horrible trials down this path. But the path is worth the end result and Booth has written a book on rock and roll that has never been equaled and rarely, and sadly, even approached by other rock writers. Typically, rock books are written on about a third grade level and only repeat the same tired old yarns again and again without anything added, corrected, or enlightened. Booth does all of this with some of the well-known passages in the lives of the Stones and doesn't even bother with most of the best known. If you're a rock fan and especially if you're a Stones fan, you know all these stories ... Booth expects this and doesn't waste your time with tired retellings.
Booth style is elegant, concise, and perfect for this subject. His own fascination with the blues led him to the Stones ... and also to save the forgotten reputation of Furry Lewis and also to witness the birth of "Dock of the Bay" as Otis Redding and Steve Cropper wrote the song as he hung out at the studio. Booth is in the right place at the right time very often and in 1969, though other tours may have been more powerful, important, or what-have-you (think The Who touring Tommy and bookending the opera with another full concert every night) but the Stones ended the '60s for everyone with the ill-advised, hurriedly-arranged Altamount free concert. Booth's retelling from his vantage point is chilling and horrible and gives an account never equaled of what mob mentality as practiced by the Hell's Angels can and does mean.
If you never read another rock book, read this one.
Really, really good.
2009-09-17 - This book moved me. That's all I can say. Great elegy for the 60s. Far superior to STP, bleh.
Music as good as it could ever be.
2009-08-11 - 2 great albums on one CD. Worth the money simply for the full version of "Papa was a Rolling Stone".
Bloody Fantastic
2009-02-04 - Guys and Gals, this book is fantastic.
Roughly half of it deals with the story of the Rolling Stones up until 1969.
The other half is a day-to-day journal of the Stones' 1969 US tour.
This book's biggest flaw is also its biggest plus: it deals with the Stones in the 1960's, thereby omitting four decades of Stones history, BUT actually giving a close-up view of their adventures in the 60's - really the decade when the Stones actually ...mattered.
Think about it: most books on the Stones deal with the sixties in the first three-quarters of the pages, then 'do' the remaining four decades in the remaining 25% of the book. Sorta tells you where the emphasis lies.
There's a big difference between reading about those 1960's events when colored thru the lens of forgiving memory by some old geezer, and reading about them from the pen of someone who was still in their years of ambition, and told from fresh memory by those involved.
Let's not forget: this book was WRITTEN on the cusp of 1970!
Stanley Booth, ladies and gentlemen, is -completely apart from his compelling subject matter- a fine writer, who pours his book into a form that makes it all the more readable. His prose, his jokes, it all draws you in. His background information makes you almost re-live (altho chances are, you weren't there, so re-live is not what you're doing) that legendary tour (a new photo collection went on sale for around $2000, so let's not underestimate this tour).
As they say on eBay: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!
Arguably the best in its genre
2008-12-13 - The Rolling Stones are very press savvy and have been for most of their career. Jagger especially, has always been good at managing his public persona and giving the media titillation rather than depth. Even co-joined twin Keef often remarks in interviews that Mick is a very guarded and calculating guy, even to those close to him. Keith himself is another master of the machine and has helped build his reputation as much on his well-documented brushes with the law and pushing the boundaries of self-inflicted abuse as on his manipulation of the media. So then, Stanley Booth is given the opportunity to hang out with the band on their 1969 American tour and we are given what Booth got; an insider's view of the band, albeit with all the distance, control, and double-talk that Jagger, Richards, Watts, et al have mastered over the years. Many have complained that this book doesn't offer enough exploration of the mechanisms that make these gentlemen tick, but that's the point. No writer can. The closest chance we have had is when Bill Wyman wrote his autobiography, but he cleverly (did these guys sign some blood-contract to not kiss and tell?) avoided gossip and back-stabbing and stuck, rather painstakingly, to just the facts. The bottom line is that a book about the Stones that will reveal what has heretofore been kept closely guarded is unlikely. Keith's upcoming autobiography will doubtlessly be full of his own increasingly inflated tales, much to Richards' delight as yet another book will emerge, chock-full of his tongue-in-cheek mischief and misdirection.
Wisely then, Booth decides to write about what he does know - his own history that took place when he was with the Stones, and that is what makes this book so unique. It isn't a fawning piece of hero worship nor is it a nasty tell-all. The author delves largely into his mission to write the book and co-joins the difficulties therein with the tour itself, which needs no additional embellishments since the drama coming out of that tour is legendary. The simultaneous back-story of Brian Jones that arcs above the tour's increasing chaos is brilliantly done so that the two paths tragically meet and we are left with a thoughtful analysis of what has made and will continue to make the Rolling Stones the Greatest Rock and Roll Band in the World. Booth is a fan of the band and we get his excitement about the shows and the adrenalin rush that surely buzzed through the band and out to all who were close enough to the maelstrom. Conversely, we also get the reality of the day-to-day drudgery and business that revealed that life on the road isn't all spotlights and ovations. To repeat, you get what Stanley Booth got; the view from someone on the wings who witnessed first-hand a historic tour and one of the highpoints in the long history of this band. My only wish is that Booth, or someone like him, could've done the same thing with the 1972 tour. Alas, by that time, already wiser and scarred from Altamont and the subsequent and well-deserved fall-out, the band cocooned itself even more and the one book that did emerge (STP) was less sympathetic and more cynical, just like the band had become.
In this genre, overflowing with garbage and uninspiring vanity pieces, Stanley Booth's book stands out for its honesty and professionalism. While I admit that I have only read a handful, it is still the best one I've ever read of not only the band, but rock and roll in general.
