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Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones on the Road to Exile
Although they did not know it then, when the Rolling Stones embarked on their farewell tour of Great Britain in March 1971 after having announced they were about to go into tax exile in the south of France, it was the end of an era. For the Stones, nothing would ever be the same again.
For ten days on that tour, the Rolling Stones traveled by train and bus to play two shows a night in many of the same small town halls and theaters where they had begun their career. Performing brand new songs like "Bitch," "Brown Sugar," "Wild Horses," and "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'" from their as-yet-unreleased album Sticky Fingers live on stage for the very first time, they also played classics like "Midnight Rambler," "Honky Tonk Women," "Satisfaction," "Street Fighting Man," and Chuck Berry's "Little Queenie" and "Let It Rock."
Because only one journalist—Robert Greenfield—was allowed to accompany the Stones on this tour, there has never before been a full-length account of the landmark event that marked the end of the first chapter of the Rolling Stones' extraordinary career.
In a larger sense, Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye is the story of two artists on the precipice. For Mick Jagger and Ketih Richards, as well as those who traveled with them, the Rolling Stones' farewell tour of England was the end of the innocence. No laminates. No backstage passes. No security. No sound checks and no rehearsals. Just the Rolling Stones on the road playing rock 'n' roll the way it was truly meant to be seen and heard.
Based on Greenfield's first-hand account as well as new interviews with many of the key players, Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye is a vibrant and thrilling look at the way it once was and would never be again in the world according to the Rolling Stones.
For ten days on that tour, the Rolling Stones traveled by train and bus to play two shows a night in many of the same small town halls and theaters where they had begun their career. Performing brand new songs like "Bitch," "Brown Sugar," "Wild Horses," and "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'" from their as-yet-unreleased album Sticky Fingers live on stage for the very first time, they also played classics like "Midnight Rambler," "Honky Tonk Women," "Satisfaction," "Street Fighting Man," and Chuck Berry's "Little Queenie" and "Let It Rock."
Because only one journalist—Robert Greenfield—was allowed to accompany the Stones on this tour, there has never before been a full-length account of the landmark event that marked the end of the first chapter of the Rolling Stones' extraordinary career.
In a larger sense, Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye is the story of two artists on the precipice. For Mick Jagger and Ketih Richards, as well as those who traveled with them, the Rolling Stones' farewell tour of England was the end of the innocence. No laminates. No backstage passes. No security. No sound checks and no rehearsals. Just the Rolling Stones on the road playing rock 'n' roll the way it was truly meant to be seen and heard.
Based on Greenfield's first-hand account as well as new interviews with many of the key players, Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye is a vibrant and thrilling look at the way it once was and would never be again in the world according to the Rolling Stones.
216 pages, Hardcover
First published May 1, 2014
10 people are currently reading
79 people want to read
About the author
Robert Greenfield
29 books63 followersA former Associate Editor of the London bureau of Rolling Stone magazine, Robert Greenfield is the critically acclaimed author of several classic rock books, among them S.T.P.: A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones, as well as the definitive biographies of Timothy Leary and Ahmet Ertegun. With Bill Graham, he is the co-author of Bill Graham Presents: My Life Inside Rock and Out, which won the ASCAP- Deems Taylor Award. An award winning novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, his short fiction has appeared in GQ, Esquire, and Playboy magazines. He lives in California.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 21, 2025
Not nearly as good as the author's "S.T.P.: A Journey Through America with the Rolling Stones", which was a great book. My advice skip this book and read S.T.P instead.
August 18, 2021
Makes touring with the Stones, at one of their musical peaks, seem like a bit of a drag. Perhaps you had to be there. Mick is exquisitely bitchy so I’ll give it a pass.
Don’t bother unless you’re a big Stones fan, literally took me four years and multiple restarts to bother finishing it, though I do like Robert’s writing style enough to be interested in his other Stones books.
Don’t bother unless you’re a big Stones fan, literally took me four years and multiple restarts to bother finishing it, though I do like Robert’s writing style enough to be interested in his other Stones books.
May 10, 2016
This short (159 pages) book about Rolling Stone excess and psychological insight was bias towards the obvious distraction of Jagger and Richards' personal and working relationships. The author as well puts in his presence and manages to skew a possibly good book into a 'Gee, I'm with the Stones' awe that fails to convince the reader that that was a good thing. Much cocaine, heroin and star appeal, this covers the Stones' last English tour before they beat it to France's more friendly tax hit and record 'Exile on Main Street.' In the second half of the book Greenfield covers an American tour and the recording of 'Goat Head Soup' in Jamaica without much depth about how those events were produced except for drugs, sex and the rock n' roll that appears magically.
August 12, 2020
Writing about popular or rock musicians can be a fraught business, depending on a number of variables, whether it's a critique, hagiography, observation and comment, the intended market and so on. Some people aren't worth writing about, or there's not much you can say about them.
Whatever your personal opinion might be about the Rolling Stones, or where you place them, if at all in the pantheon of rock music, they have a cultural and social significance beyond a particular perspective. This book presents a window into the past, now close to 50 years ago when all sorts of things were quite different.
Robert Greenfield is a familiar name, although I can't recall that I've read all that much of his work. Here he chronicles his experience of this group, and others associated with them, on and off the road in 1971 and 1972, in Britain, France and the United States. It also contains elements of memoir in which he punctuates the text, particularly in the first part of the book, with reflections and other comments, explaining the events he's narrating.
I've never been a great fan of the Stones, although I still own albums from just before this period and went to see them in Melbourne in 1973, not long after the period covered by the book. Having said that, I did own the three albums referred to here and have maintained an interest.
There's the usual drugs and debauchery stuff, as one might expect, but Greenfield provides insights into what it was like to love in those times. It's amusing in a way to read of members of the band travelling by train to a gig, including missing connections of various kinds. The surrounding conditions in the Britain of 1971 are enlightening, even for the historically inclined. The author has a typewriter, and there are no computers or digital media. The Vietnam War, a concern to me at the time, still goes on.
Greenfield isn't sure whether he's an insider or outsider in the group surrounding the whole group, and it seems that it was both, depending on circumstances. He tries to work out the kinds of people Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are and his musings are interesting, particularly arounbd what I would call power relationships and the nature of truth.
The prose appears lively and accessible and made the whole story enjoyably easy to read, perfect, perhaps for a covid lockdown, where other books lie around partly read, or waiting to be read. My rating includes appreciation for its psychological appropriateness. I could have read it in one sitting, but an evening and part of the morning were sufficient.
Highly recommended, regardless of whether you like the Stones, or not.
Whatever your personal opinion might be about the Rolling Stones, or where you place them, if at all in the pantheon of rock music, they have a cultural and social significance beyond a particular perspective. This book presents a window into the past, now close to 50 years ago when all sorts of things were quite different.
Robert Greenfield is a familiar name, although I can't recall that I've read all that much of his work. Here he chronicles his experience of this group, and others associated with them, on and off the road in 1971 and 1972, in Britain, France and the United States. It also contains elements of memoir in which he punctuates the text, particularly in the first part of the book, with reflections and other comments, explaining the events he's narrating.
I've never been a great fan of the Stones, although I still own albums from just before this period and went to see them in Melbourne in 1973, not long after the period covered by the book. Having said that, I did own the three albums referred to here and have maintained an interest.
There's the usual drugs and debauchery stuff, as one might expect, but Greenfield provides insights into what it was like to love in those times. It's amusing in a way to read of members of the band travelling by train to a gig, including missing connections of various kinds. The surrounding conditions in the Britain of 1971 are enlightening, even for the historically inclined. The author has a typewriter, and there are no computers or digital media. The Vietnam War, a concern to me at the time, still goes on.
Greenfield isn't sure whether he's an insider or outsider in the group surrounding the whole group, and it seems that it was both, depending on circumstances. He tries to work out the kinds of people Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are and his musings are interesting, particularly arounbd what I would call power relationships and the nature of truth.
The prose appears lively and accessible and made the whole story enjoyably easy to read, perfect, perhaps for a covid lockdown, where other books lie around partly read, or waiting to be read. My rating includes appreciation for its psychological appropriateness. I could have read it in one sitting, but an evening and part of the morning were sufficient.
Highly recommended, regardless of whether you like the Stones, or not.
January 31, 2020
It's all right. Not the most highly interesting time of the history of the Stones, but the author knows his shit. Read STP.
December 29, 2020
A quick look back at one of the wildest tours in rock and roll history.
Buckle up.
Buckle up.
September 30, 2021
Good book for any Stones fan!
This book was an fun, easy read and has a lot of information even though it’s a short, easy read!
This book was an fun, easy read and has a lot of information even though it’s a short, easy read!
December 29, 2024
Very good book written by the only journalist on the 1971 "farewell" tour of England. But he makes a mistake I've seen other authors make. It's John Huston, not John Houston.
August 24, 2022
Who'd want to be a Rolling Sttone? Not me if this account gives anything near an accurate portrait of the band in the earlier phase of its existence. The music may have been great, but the people? Did any of them ever like, or even care about, the others in the band or those around them? Seems not. Perhaps they were just work colleagues who happened to like the same music.
April 17, 2023
3.5 stars
This one is obviously for fans of the group and probably won't interest too many others.
A short and easy read of the group's tour of Britain in 1971, a country they were initially saying farewell to, and their future plans included moving to the South of France as tax exiles.
This they did, even though they didn't stay there for as long as originally planned, but did record their double LP, EXILE ON MAIN STREET ( or a large part of it) there.
As well as covering the '71 tour, Greenfield takes us through the days of hedonism in France and then later in the US, where final work was done to finish the EXILE album.
This book is a prequel of sorts to the same author's book about the group's 1972 US tour. That book, originally called STP, (Stones Touring Party) was popular in the 70's when it was released, the writing/publication of this book is a more recent event.
One of those books where I could read a chapter or two, put aside for a while, then go back to where I left off. Well, that's how I read it.
This one is obviously for fans of the group and probably won't interest too many others.
A short and easy read of the group's tour of Britain in 1971, a country they were initially saying farewell to, and their future plans included moving to the South of France as tax exiles.
This they did, even though they didn't stay there for as long as originally planned, but did record their double LP, EXILE ON MAIN STREET ( or a large part of it) there.
As well as covering the '71 tour, Greenfield takes us through the days of hedonism in France and then later in the US, where final work was done to finish the EXILE album.
This book is a prequel of sorts to the same author's book about the group's 1972 US tour. That book, originally called STP, (Stones Touring Party) was popular in the 70's when it was released, the writing/publication of this book is a more recent event.
One of those books where I could read a chapter or two, put aside for a while, then go back to where I left off. Well, that's how I read it.
February 23, 2015
It was a toss up whether to give 3 stars or 4 stars for Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye, so I opted for the 4 stars. The book was informative, but just didn't "grab" me. If you are a hard core Stones fan you will probably really like this book, but for a middling fan the author seemed a bit like every other run of the mill author telling about the Rolling Stones. Keith and Mick are the be all, end all and the others are not too much worth mentioning. He did say a bit about Bobby Keys, the saxophone player, but much of it seemed to be in a critical vein and he wasn't a Stone.
I would recommend this book to hard core Rolling Stone fans.
I would recommend this book to hard core Rolling Stone fans.
July 13, 2014
Having never read the author's other two books on the Stones I found this to be fresh and full of insights. Mick & Keith seem shallow and narcissistic but are written with an insight that brings out the loneliness of stardom. You feel they the Rolling Stones did have a universe unto themselves that they were trapped in.
I look forward to reading more as this book was over far too quickly. Don't know if it will be Exile or STP.
I look forward to reading more as this book was over far too quickly. Don't know if it will be Exile or STP.
September 6, 2016
Consistently great author of RS books. This details the final UK tour before the 'Stones were exiled to the south of France. A great prequel to his Keith interview from Rolling Stone magazine '71*, Exile On Main Street: A Season In Hell With The Rolling Stones and A Day In The Life (his book about Tommy Weber, whom you will be familiar with after reading this.
* The full interview is contained in the book "Keith Richards on Keith Richards".
* The full interview is contained in the book "Keith Richards on Keith Richards".
December 31, 2017
This little book left me wanting more. The first two-thirds describes the last time the Rolling Stones could casually tour England. The personalities come through very clearly. The last third is set in various locations during the tax exile. The albums are iconic (Exile on Main Street) but the band was splintering. It's shocking to look back and see the amount of drug use so prevalent then.
July 21, 2015
A very short, brisk read that alternates between pointless, rote observations (Anita Pallenberg is hot!) and somewhat interesting musings on how Keith's various vices and Bianca Jagger were slowly unraveling the band. A must for Stones fans, if you can tolerate Greenfield's highly self-conscious writing.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews