What left is there to say about The Rolling Stones? A lot, it turns out. Bob Spitz has brought his five decades of experiences in the fields and hollows of rock 'n’ roll to bear on his five-year journey to reexamine one of popular music’s greatest stories.
Magisterial ... Captures the drama, trauma and betrayals that have kept the Stones in the public’s consciousness for more than six decades ... Although Spitz unearths little new information, he excels at presenting the Stones in glorious Technicolor. Spitz homes in on the telling details and anecdotes that give the band’s story a deep richness and poignancy ... Hundreds of books have been written about the Rolling Stones, but few sparkle quite like Spitz’s. For anyone who loves or even likes the Stones, it’s indispensable.
Mr. Spitz, the author of well-received studies of Bob Dylan, the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, has a clear-eyed view of the band: the business, the spectacle, the collateral damage. What he offers is an updated take on a familiar portrait. The faces are the same, but the light is different, and suddenly you see shadows you never noticed, a new determination in one person’s eyes, a scar along the jaw of another. You won’t look at the Stones the same way again.
Fond, voluble and diligent to a fault, a long and boisterous march ... Many small revelations and corrections emerge along the way ... Spitz is both forensic and poetic in his extensive recounting of the band’s musical output ... Appropriately celebratory and bittersweet.
