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The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones
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 1968. He lived with them throughout their 1969 tour across the United States, 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 1960s. In Booth’s afterword, he finally explains why it took him 15 years to write the book, relating an astonishing story of drugs, jails, and disasters. Updated to include a foreword by Greil Marcus, this 30th anniversary edition is for Rolling Stones fans everywhere.
416 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1984
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About the author
Stanley Booth
12 books33 followersStanley Booth was an American music journalist based in Memphis, Tennessee. Characterized by Richie Unterberger as a "fine, if not extremely prolific, writer who generally speaking specializes in portraits of roots musicians, most of whom did their best work in the '60s and '50s," Booth has written extensively about Keith Richards, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, James Brown, Elvis Presley, Gram Parsons, B.B. King, and Al Green. He chronicled his travels with the Rolling Stones in several of his works.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 156 reviews
October 25, 2012
There is not, nor will there ever be, another book on The Rolling Stones that you can read five or even ten times and be rewarded, every time. I know whereof I speak.
Ethan Russell
posted: 10/25/2012
Ethan Russell
posted: 10/25/2012
February 21, 2009
Brilliantly constructed, explosive, masterful imagery...the best book on rock and roll I have ever read, and I have read far too many books on rock and roll. Covering the Stones at their peak, the chapters alternate and tell two stories in one: the odd chapters build up to Altamont, and the even chapters build up to the death of Brian Jones. The book didn't come out until 1984, and by that point, the culture had so irrevocably changed (and the rebellious relevance of the Rolling Stones)that this book was never given the accolades it deserves. Admiring but never fawning, "The True Adventures..." is the documentary "Cocksucker Blues" with Nabokovian sensuality, and a real taste of how truly dangerous yet driven the Rolling Stones were with their music and their lives. Its literary ambitions put this miles beyond the usual Creemy post-beat raving you've come to expect from the genre. I can't recommend this book enough...even if you don't like the Rolling Stones, it's still a completely engaging story.
July 20, 2012
Reading about the Stones makes me feel like the hero of the French comedy Brice de Nice, a 30-something surfer who hangs around his waveless bay on the Mediterranean watching Point Break and waiting for the perfect swell. Watching whoever is the latest craze on MTV doesn't help either; the man-made swells that power those 'stars' are less awe-inspiring than sad, conjuring visions of a time when things were different, picking away at the wound. What the Stones did was to ride an uncontrollable wave from out of an unknown ocean, and any book about them that claims to be more than a litany, a homage or just plain gossip should surely lead us to a greater understanding of the nature of that wave and that ocean. Stanley Booth comprehends this challenge, but ultimately does little more than describe (or suggest) the feeling at the centre - the sense of time standing still as the wave curls around you. Yeah, he was there; he took the drugs and watched the days/months/years slip away. But in a way his book feels like a purgatory, because what point in living that life without the release of being able to jump on stage or write a song or record it now and then? He's not quite a Stone but not a civilian, not entirely in the wave but unable to step out of it and see it from a distance. And ultimately maybe he too has something of Brice de Nice about him - a man waiting for a revelation that can never happen. Listen...
I mean, wow, that's sad, right? 'Almost forever ago' - I feel that, I really do. And the guy can write, no question. But what does it amount to, this half-remembered transcript of a time when meanings 'seemed for a time to be' clearer? Not much, it seems - and I'm sorry, sorry for this kid who follows around a rock band as if he might find in them the substance necessary to animate his writing, sorry for the older man who looks back on it and wonders what has slipped through his fingers. Music writers, it seems likely, are often frustrated 'literary' writers. That Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick (who supposedly called Booth's book 'The one authentic masterpiece of rock 'n' roll writing'(!)) should so revere this piece of autobiography-with-scenery-by-the-Stones perhaps says more about their own aspirations to something 'beyond' rock 'n' roll writing than about the value of this book to people who care about rock 'n' roll. Yeah, there's a neat summation of the Stones' careers up to 1969, a couple of vivid descriptions of gigs and a good few pages on the recording of 'You Gotta Move', 'Brown Sugar' and 'Wild Horses' at Muscle Shoals - but taken together that adds up to about a third of the bulk of this monster. I want to like this; I want to believe there's more to it than the realisation that what had seemed so simple and obvious on the drugs is no longer comprehensible; but after 600 pages of nameless dread and no revelation I don't think I can. Stones fans, read it, by all means, but don't expect any great insight. No matter what he says, Stanley Booth was too busy partying to comprehend what 'really' happened.
Mark Twain said if you wrote well enough your work would last 'forever - and by forever I mean thirty years.' The True Adventures, first published in the United States in 1984, has lasted slightly more than one half of forever. Whatever they are now, or may be in the future, the Rolling Stones, when they were young, put themselves in jeopardy many times because of who they were, what they were, how they lived, what they believed. During portions of those years, I was with them. Some people survived that era and some didn't. The True Adventures is the story of those days, when the world was younger, and meanings were, or seemed for a time to be, clearer. Almost forever ago.
I mean, wow, that's sad, right? 'Almost forever ago' - I feel that, I really do. And the guy can write, no question. But what does it amount to, this half-remembered transcript of a time when meanings 'seemed for a time to be' clearer? Not much, it seems - and I'm sorry, sorry for this kid who follows around a rock band as if he might find in them the substance necessary to animate his writing, sorry for the older man who looks back on it and wonders what has slipped through his fingers. Music writers, it seems likely, are often frustrated 'literary' writers. That Greil Marcus and Peter Guralnick (who supposedly called Booth's book 'The one authentic masterpiece of rock 'n' roll writing'(!)) should so revere this piece of autobiography-with-scenery-by-the-Stones perhaps says more about their own aspirations to something 'beyond' rock 'n' roll writing than about the value of this book to people who care about rock 'n' roll. Yeah, there's a neat summation of the Stones' careers up to 1969, a couple of vivid descriptions of gigs and a good few pages on the recording of 'You Gotta Move', 'Brown Sugar' and 'Wild Horses' at Muscle Shoals - but taken together that adds up to about a third of the bulk of this monster. I want to like this; I want to believe there's more to it than the realisation that what had seemed so simple and obvious on the drugs is no longer comprehensible; but after 600 pages of nameless dread and no revelation I don't think I can. Stones fans, read it, by all means, but don't expect any great insight. No matter what he says, Stanley Booth was too busy partying to comprehend what 'really' happened.
May 16, 2019
Sono sicuro che Stanley Booth avrebbe voluto intitolare questo libro "Volevo essere Truman Capote - o in seconda battuta Tom Wolfe- invece sono nato con qualche anno di ritardo e mi tocca correre dietro a questi cinque stronzi", e sì, perchè il pennino del buon Booth è intinto in quell'inchiostro profumato di new journalism - che insieme al jazz e al burro d'arachidi è l'unica cultura originale d'oltreoceano - che riesce a dare odor di nuovo persino a storie che si son sentite mille e mille volte - in fondo la materia è fragile: uno scrittore "confederato" in bolletta innamorato di Faulkner e del suono di Memphis(e con un debole per dipendenze tossiche e groupie) alla ricerca di un qualche anticipo sulla pubblicazione si unisce ai Rolling Stones nel loro tour di conquista dell'America in una delle loro annate migliori, il '69 - e a imbastire, non senza difficoltà - gli ci son voluti quindici anni per rimettere insieme migliaia di appunti e a cacciar via le malefiche scorie Jagger/Richards - uno dei cinque libri più belli intorno alle più popolare delle arti del secondo 900. In queste cose è sempre lo sguardo che conta e qui lo sguardo fatto di camere di albergo, interni di macchine, sale da musica, ristoranti, sale prove, come una cinepresa che aspira all'indifferenza della documentazione ma non riesce a scansare la malefica empatia - siamo dalle parti del Cocksucker Blues di Robert Frank di pochi anni dopo o per restare nel campo delle parole dei dylaniani "Diari del Rolling Thunder" di Sam Shepard (un altro dei cinque libri imperdibili) - quasi che a contare non siano gli show ma i tempi morti, le attese, la presa di possesso da parte degli eroi mitologi dei luoghi della quotidianità che da poveri oggetti d'uso toccati dalla mano degli Dei di una religione laica diventano caverne sacre e un po' sinistre. E' anche un libro che restituisce intatatta quell'atmosfera naif di quando il rock era un giovanotto ingenuo seduto in mezzo a quell'elastico teso tra businness e comunicazione tra industria e movement. Che poi si voglia vedere nelle violenze di Altamont che chiusero quel tour chissà quale simbologia della fine, è, a mio parere, solo chiacchiericcio da moralisti americani che han bisogno di leggere segni nel cielo per giustificare ogni rinascita in peggio (e quali emissari migliori di una compagine di tossici e sex addictet come gli inglesi Rolling Stones?) che sia l'assassino di Kennedy o le torri sbriciolate poco importa. In mezzo a questo bailamme di tensione emotiva Booth infila, a dividere i capitoli in presa diretta, la storia del Grande Assente, quel Brian Jones affogato l'anno prima in piscina ma morto per troppa esposizione ai crudeli effluvi Jagger/Richards, e l'ho letta come una vendetta a freddo dell'autore, una sorta di risarcimento per quel tot di vita che quel tour gli ha rosicchiato via.
E' un libro d'archeologia questo, sarebbe impossibile da scriversi oggi: immaginatevi un povero scribacchino in bolletta costretto a seguire che so i Radiohead in tour, passerebbe le sere a fare raccolta differenziata, a mangiare tofu, a intrattenersi con groupie che regalano libri di Murakami e fanno sesso con la maglietta di Emergency addosso e a subire i malefici influssi del si minore (che è certamente più pericoloso di una dipendenza da eroina).
E' un libro d'archeologia questo, sarebbe impossibile da scriversi oggi: immaginatevi un povero scribacchino in bolletta costretto a seguire che so i Radiohead in tour, passerebbe le sere a fare raccolta differenziata, a mangiare tofu, a intrattenersi con groupie che regalano libri di Murakami e fanno sesso con la maglietta di Emergency addosso e a subire i malefici influssi del si minore (che è certamente più pericoloso di una dipendenza da eroina).
March 29, 2017
After years of circling this thing, I have finally read the rock’n’roll book that makes all the rock’n’roll books look faint and puny. No Almost Famous feel-good picnics, no Hammer of the Gods tabloid sleaze. Some thoughts (we’ll be here for awhile):
* Author Stanley Booth hit the road with the Stones in 1969, and that tour is the central story, but he begins at the beginning. These flashbacks, narrated mostly by Keith Richards and Ian "Stu" Stewart, put us right in the the cold, dirty apartments and tour buses of the band’s early years and remind us that these blues purists and later jet-setters were English. The early gigs were basically a string of riots, played in those decaying pre-war ballrooms. Stu describes a Blackpool show crashed by Glaswegians spending all their dough on drink and looking for a fight—in Germany they call them poison dwarves, Stu tells us. Booth, who has a regional flair himself (Jagger asks where to spend his mid-tour break—Eureka Springs in Arkansas, Booth tells him), appreciates a man who knows his turf.
* Brian Jones haunts the book. He might have faded badly down the stretch, but we see him as the crucial free-spirit force to set the whole enterprise in motion. In one of his many journalistic coups, Booth spends a surreal afternoon with Brian’s parents in their Cheltenham parlor and looks at family photos of their famous, dead son.
* Thanksgiving 1969 at producer Jerry Wexler’s house on Long Island, with its Magrittes on the wall. Booth rides the train back into town with Wexler’s 80-year-old mom (who’s disappointed Jerry didn’t stick with journalism), sees her into a cab at Penn Station, and walks down the block to Madison Square Garden, where the Stones are about to do the first of the three shows that would be preserved on Get Yer Ya-Yas Out. Hendrix shows up backstage; Mick Taylor gives Jimi his right-handed-but-who-cares guitar to play, but Jagger, who still resents Hendrix for once trying to steal Marianne Faithfull from him, doesn’t join in—he silently does his mascara in the next dressing room. A drunk Janis Joplin passes through. Jimi sits behind Keith’s amp for the actual show. Later they all go to a party, and Mick makes off with Hendrix’s favorite groupie, the legendary Devon Wilson. I mean, what a day.
* The band goes to Muscle Shoals and records a few songs that will end up on Sticky Fingers two years later. Original title of “Brown Sugar”: “Black Pussy.”
* Some might stiffen at Booth’s nonchalance about the balling, as well as his own infidelities. But he is a Southern gentlemen, and not even deep down, and he instinctively (as opposed to politically) respects women. There is a prescient sizing-up of (opening act) Ike Turner as the devil to Tina’s angel, years before the abuse stuff came out.
* Even rock stars have to eat. Someone brings Chinese takeout; no utensils, so you eat it with popsicle sticks. Or you want to eat at four in the morning; too late for room service, so you bribe the bellman to find some cheeseburgers, but you just snorted two lines of H, so you’re too tired and nauseous to eat the burgers when they arrive. In food vs. drugs, drugs win every time. Over the course of the book, their tour manager loses 21 pounds.
* Charlie Watts, “the world’s politest man.”
* Eight hours late to their Palm Beach gig. Almost dawn when they get there, cold; they go on anyway. Afterwards, cocaine and breakfast. On the flight back later that day, the little prop plane needs a repair; Jagger and Booth, in these pre-9/11 days, disembark, wander down the tarmac and lie in the landing-field grass.
* I don’t believe in the romance of misery or debauchery as essential to creativity—Dostoevsky settled down to write all his big novels once his sane, second wife cultivated some damn peace and quiet for him—but standing in the shower one morning during my long month of living with this book (I’m a slow reader), it occurred to me that the Stones’ art could only be the product of living outside the pale. As Robert Stone said, it was a hard music for a time of hard living. You stagger out of this music. Each chapter has its own epigraph, clearly a labor of love for Booth. Favorites are a series of quotes on the agony and ecstasy of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and a priceless discussion where Jerry Lee Lewis insists to Sam Phillips that, oh yes, they are playing the devil’s music.
* Like Gimme Shelter filmmakers the Maysles brothers (who float in and out of the book), Booth “lucked” into the big ending for his book with a front-row seat at Altamont. They all know it’s bad the minute they arrive. Hell’s Angels are not just taking LSD but smearing it on their faces. Bad omen: even a 2-year-old (parents undetermined) in the Stones’s trailer tells Keith, twice, she’s going to “beat him up.” What impresses Booth the most about the Gomorrah-esque crowd is its speed, the way it opens and closes in a shot: “I had no idea people in a crowd could move so fast. . . . [Jagger, who attempts to appeal to them] was offering the social contract to a twister of flailing dark shapes.”
* One of the running gags in the book is Booth’s difficulties producing the publisher’s contract to prove he belongs on the tour. A harbinger, as the book would take fifteen long years to materialize. As he explains in a lengthy (and disconcertingly bitter) afterword, Booth went off the rails with the drugs and depression (complaints include an “LSD-induced back injury”). The first wife—the intriguingly named Christopher who works for the long-gone, possibly fictitious Omega Airlines and strikes us as a bit of a saint, but a fun saint—was obviously a casualty. Booth mentions that he was also along on the 1972 tour, but that it was "an ugly scene full of amyl nitrate, Quaaludes, tequila sunrises, cocaine, heroin, and too many pistoleros, and it left me with more material than I could ever use,” an enticing quote if ever there was one. He made little money off this masterpiece—after paying back the advance he may have actually lost money on it—but seems to be proud of its rep out there. He never wrote another book of anywhere near this one’s stature. One senses Booth has had a tough life. That knowledge affects the way you look at him in Gimme Shelter, dancing around with Mick and Keith in the Holiday Inn to the hot-off-the-presses “Brown Sugar.” Yeah, that funny little guy, if you’ve seen the movie, is Stanley Booth.
* Brian Jones had just completed months of dental work in early 1969, so he had perfect teeth when he died.
* Author Stanley Booth hit the road with the Stones in 1969, and that tour is the central story, but he begins at the beginning. These flashbacks, narrated mostly by Keith Richards and Ian "Stu" Stewart, put us right in the the cold, dirty apartments and tour buses of the band’s early years and remind us that these blues purists and later jet-setters were English. The early gigs were basically a string of riots, played in those decaying pre-war ballrooms. Stu describes a Blackpool show crashed by Glaswegians spending all their dough on drink and looking for a fight—in Germany they call them poison dwarves, Stu tells us. Booth, who has a regional flair himself (Jagger asks where to spend his mid-tour break—Eureka Springs in Arkansas, Booth tells him), appreciates a man who knows his turf.
* Brian Jones haunts the book. He might have faded badly down the stretch, but we see him as the crucial free-spirit force to set the whole enterprise in motion. In one of his many journalistic coups, Booth spends a surreal afternoon with Brian’s parents in their Cheltenham parlor and looks at family photos of their famous, dead son.
* Thanksgiving 1969 at producer Jerry Wexler’s house on Long Island, with its Magrittes on the wall. Booth rides the train back into town with Wexler’s 80-year-old mom (who’s disappointed Jerry didn’t stick with journalism), sees her into a cab at Penn Station, and walks down the block to Madison Square Garden, where the Stones are about to do the first of the three shows that would be preserved on Get Yer Ya-Yas Out. Hendrix shows up backstage; Mick Taylor gives Jimi his right-handed-but-who-cares guitar to play, but Jagger, who still resents Hendrix for once trying to steal Marianne Faithfull from him, doesn’t join in—he silently does his mascara in the next dressing room. A drunk Janis Joplin passes through. Jimi sits behind Keith’s amp for the actual show. Later they all go to a party, and Mick makes off with Hendrix’s favorite groupie, the legendary Devon Wilson. I mean, what a day.
* The band goes to Muscle Shoals and records a few songs that will end up on Sticky Fingers two years later. Original title of “Brown Sugar”: “Black Pussy.”
* Some might stiffen at Booth’s nonchalance about the balling, as well as his own infidelities. But he is a Southern gentlemen, and not even deep down, and he instinctively (as opposed to politically) respects women. There is a prescient sizing-up of (opening act) Ike Turner as the devil to Tina’s angel, years before the abuse stuff came out.
* Even rock stars have to eat. Someone brings Chinese takeout; no utensils, so you eat it with popsicle sticks. Or you want to eat at four in the morning; too late for room service, so you bribe the bellman to find some cheeseburgers, but you just snorted two lines of H, so you’re too tired and nauseous to eat the burgers when they arrive. In food vs. drugs, drugs win every time. Over the course of the book, their tour manager loses 21 pounds.
* Charlie Watts, “the world’s politest man.”
* Eight hours late to their Palm Beach gig. Almost dawn when they get there, cold; they go on anyway. Afterwards, cocaine and breakfast. On the flight back later that day, the little prop plane needs a repair; Jagger and Booth, in these pre-9/11 days, disembark, wander down the tarmac and lie in the landing-field grass.
* I don’t believe in the romance of misery or debauchery as essential to creativity—Dostoevsky settled down to write all his big novels once his sane, second wife cultivated some damn peace and quiet for him—but standing in the shower one morning during my long month of living with this book (I’m a slow reader), it occurred to me that the Stones’ art could only be the product of living outside the pale. As Robert Stone said, it was a hard music for a time of hard living. You stagger out of this music. Each chapter has its own epigraph, clearly a labor of love for Booth. Favorites are a series of quotes on the agony and ecstasy of jazz pioneer Buddy Bolden and a priceless discussion where Jerry Lee Lewis insists to Sam Phillips that, oh yes, they are playing the devil’s music.
* Like Gimme Shelter filmmakers the Maysles brothers (who float in and out of the book), Booth “lucked” into the big ending for his book with a front-row seat at Altamont. They all know it’s bad the minute they arrive. Hell’s Angels are not just taking LSD but smearing it on their faces. Bad omen: even a 2-year-old (parents undetermined) in the Stones’s trailer tells Keith, twice, she’s going to “beat him up.” What impresses Booth the most about the Gomorrah-esque crowd is its speed, the way it opens and closes in a shot: “I had no idea people in a crowd could move so fast. . . . [Jagger, who attempts to appeal to them] was offering the social contract to a twister of flailing dark shapes.”
* One of the running gags in the book is Booth’s difficulties producing the publisher’s contract to prove he belongs on the tour. A harbinger, as the book would take fifteen long years to materialize. As he explains in a lengthy (and disconcertingly bitter) afterword, Booth went off the rails with the drugs and depression (complaints include an “LSD-induced back injury”). The first wife—the intriguingly named Christopher who works for the long-gone, possibly fictitious Omega Airlines and strikes us as a bit of a saint, but a fun saint—was obviously a casualty. Booth mentions that he was also along on the 1972 tour, but that it was "an ugly scene full of amyl nitrate, Quaaludes, tequila sunrises, cocaine, heroin, and too many pistoleros, and it left me with more material than I could ever use,” an enticing quote if ever there was one. He made little money off this masterpiece—after paying back the advance he may have actually lost money on it—but seems to be proud of its rep out there. He never wrote another book of anywhere near this one’s stature. One senses Booth has had a tough life. That knowledge affects the way you look at him in Gimme Shelter, dancing around with Mick and Keith in the Holiday Inn to the hot-off-the-presses “Brown Sugar.” Yeah, that funny little guy, if you’ve seen the movie, is Stanley Booth.
* Brian Jones had just completed months of dental work in early 1969, so he had perfect teeth when he died.
September 18, 2023
The year 1969 was a pivotal one for the Stones. Founding member, Brian Jones, died in July of that year after being fired from the band (or after he quit according to him). They also released the second album in their golden quartet, the inimitably apocalyptic "Let it Bleed." Finally at the end of the year, they killed the 60s with the Altamont concert, the legendarily violent anti-Woodstock.
In his book, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, Stanley Booth attempts to capture the history of the Stones, using the year 1969 as a framing device. In alternating chapters, he starts off with the founding of the band leading up to the death of Brian Jones, and the lead-up to Altamont during their 1969 American tour. He also tells his story a little bit, mainly the trials involved in getting access to the Stones and getting his contract completed to write this book.
Given that Booth was an insider who was granted access by the Stones and seemed to be friends with them, he gets a seemingly candid and entertaining picture of who the stones were at this time. Mick comes off as naive, sweet, and entertaining. Keith comes off just as one would expect: gritty, hilarious, an cool. Charlie Watts is a polite, intelligent sweetheart. Bill Wyman is a bit of a non-entity, but not nearly as much as Mick Taylor, who is barely present at all. Seeing them all interact through Booth's eyes is a lot of fun, and honestly way less hedonistic than I would expect. Yes, there's lots of cocaine and speed, but there's barely any sex, which I was happy about, because I was worried I would have to feel bad about the Stones being total creeps. (This is exempting Bill Wyman, who seems like a sex addict and later would "date" and marry a thirteen year old, who is undoubtedly, a huge creep to say the absolute least.)
The bigger story outside of the Stones' personalities is the cultural hysteria around the Stones. This is mainly told in the sections leading up to Brian Jones' death. I was shocked by how fans treated them, literally ripping their hair out, clothes off, and car doors off their hinges (I'm not kidding). Further, Booth explores society's view of the Stones and their corrupting influence on the youth.
Booth successfully paints a very dark picture surrounding the Stones and the writing is uniformly excellent. It's a lot more poetic and literary than much of the nonfiction I've read. He can also be wickedly funny.
My only problem with the book is that Booth is really creepy about women. He constantly objectifies every woman who is introduced to the story. Further, there are some deeply uncomfortable points when Booth says things like, "She was too cute to be a minute over 17." Yeesh, man. He also throws around the n-word a couple of times, sometimes quoting others and sometimes just using it himself. Obviously the amount of times Booth should use the n-word is ZERO and he can't manage to write his story without using it...which seems weird. This was published in 1984--how could he think that it was appropriate to put this stuff in the book? All of this tainted my experience with the book and is why I knocked a star off for an otherwise excellent book.
In his book, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, Stanley Booth attempts to capture the history of the Stones, using the year 1969 as a framing device. In alternating chapters, he starts off with the founding of the band leading up to the death of Brian Jones, and the lead-up to Altamont during their 1969 American tour. He also tells his story a little bit, mainly the trials involved in getting access to the Stones and getting his contract completed to write this book.
Given that Booth was an insider who was granted access by the Stones and seemed to be friends with them, he gets a seemingly candid and entertaining picture of who the stones were at this time. Mick comes off as naive, sweet, and entertaining. Keith comes off just as one would expect: gritty, hilarious, an cool. Charlie Watts is a polite, intelligent sweetheart. Bill Wyman is a bit of a non-entity, but not nearly as much as Mick Taylor, who is barely present at all. Seeing them all interact through Booth's eyes is a lot of fun, and honestly way less hedonistic than I would expect. Yes, there's lots of cocaine and speed, but there's barely any sex, which I was happy about, because I was worried I would have to feel bad about the Stones being total creeps. (This is exempting Bill Wyman, who seems like a sex addict and later would "date" and marry a thirteen year old, who is undoubtedly, a huge creep to say the absolute least.)
The bigger story outside of the Stones' personalities is the cultural hysteria around the Stones. This is mainly told in the sections leading up to Brian Jones' death. I was shocked by how fans treated them, literally ripping their hair out, clothes off, and car doors off their hinges (I'm not kidding). Further, Booth explores society's view of the Stones and their corrupting influence on the youth.
Booth successfully paints a very dark picture surrounding the Stones and the writing is uniformly excellent. It's a lot more poetic and literary than much of the nonfiction I've read. He can also be wickedly funny.
My only problem with the book is that Booth is really creepy about women. He constantly objectifies every woman who is introduced to the story. Further, there are some deeply uncomfortable points when Booth says things like, "She was too cute to be a minute over 17." Yeesh, man. He also throws around the n-word a couple of times, sometimes quoting others and sometimes just using it himself. Obviously the amount of times Booth should use the n-word is ZERO and he can't manage to write his story without using it...which seems weird. This was published in 1984--how could he think that it was appropriate to put this stuff in the book? All of this tainted my experience with the book and is why I knocked a star off for an otherwise excellent book.
June 24, 2025
Some really excellent anecdotes but the author just went on and on about his own life and made it all really pretentious
January 6, 2012
On Stanley Booth: Rolling with the Stones on Waves of the Times
This is less a formal review of Stanley Booth’s now-classic book, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, than it is a statement of appreciation for the same. In fact, I can state at this time that my biggest criticism of the title, or at least of the edition I own, is that it lacks an index. Having become the modern essential reference text on the Rolling Stones that it is, a reader can only hope that someone plans to publish an edition that contains one. But for the time being I’ll say this––
If you could arrange a chat over a cup of coffee or tea with a literary journalist from any given period –such as Ralph Ellison, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, or Tom Wolfe––about how they accomplished what they have as literary journalists, one thing might soon become clear: a huge part of getting the job done was allowing whatever situation they were covering to swallow them whole. As in mind, body, soul, and the bits and pieces of dreams and nightmares that held their lives together. Apply that concept to the reality of Stanley Booth making his way through the giant waves of counterculture rebellion that swept over the 1960s and a profound mosaic of imagery emerges.
For one, there is the ambitious writer with a distinct literary sensibility born and bred in Waycross, Georgia (where the late great Ossie Davis attended high school) lobbying in England, California, and elsewhere for a contract to write the book now known as The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones with their “full and exclusive cooperation.” There is the artist determined to maintain focus on his work ––taking detailed notes on everything from the style of Keith Richards’ jacket and the impact of Mick Jagger’s toothache on a rehearsal to the polish on B.B. King’s custom-made Gibson guitar and the nearly overwhelming heat generated by Tina Turner’s on-stage sensuality.
Beyond simply noting such observances is an enviable talent for transforming them into transcendent poetry, as with this snapshot of Mick Jagger at the L.A. Forum in 1969 just before he goes onstage: “In the backstage doorway Jagger was standing, dressed in black trousers with silver buttons down the legs, black scoop-neck jersey with white Leo glyph on chest, wide metal-studded black belt, long red flowing scarf, on his head an Uncle Sam hat, his eyes wide and dark, looking like a bullfighter standing in the sun just inside the door of the arena, seeing nothing but the path he walks, toreros and banderilleros beside and behind him, to his fate.”
Along the same lines, Booth writes like something of a natural seer when interpreting certain moments that might be described as the philosophical nuances of the psychedelic times: “It is possible that to know the essence of this moment you would have to be part of the most Damoclean time yet seen on earth… to have come to this music in the innocence of youth because of its humanity… to follow it steadfastly through all manner of troubles, and to have found yourself in a huge dark saucer-mushroom, doing it again, playing for survival, for your life. You had to be there.”
That he was there and allowed the powerful uproar of the 1960s, as set to the music of the Rolling Stones, to swallow him whole in order to deliver an enduring first-hand account of it, is a major part of what makes Booth’s work the titanic achievement that it is. The 1960s laid the groundwork for the end of one era and the beginning of another. By the time Booth hit the road to tag along with the Stones on tour during the latter part of the decade, scenes like those of the recent beatings and pepper-sprayings experienced by Occupy Wall Street protesters were fairly common in the U.S. and elsewhere. So was a seemingly ceaseless flow of marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and other drugs that everyone knew were illegal but which many consumed to sedate themselves from the brutalities of the times (NOTE: Please DO NOT interpret that last statement as an endorsement for the use of hard drugs).
With a string of well-known assassinations, racial tension that boiled over into actual physical clashes, war, and a serious push to reestablish the tenets of sexual expressiveness, the world vibrated from one day to the next between frequencies of barely-contained anarchy and imploding chaos. To place oneself in the burning thick of it all, open-eyed and armed only with a pen, a pad, a Georgia boy’s swamp-grown bravado, and hopes for future literary vindication as Booth did, is every bit as admirable as so many have already said. To have accomplished what he set out to, at a cost much greater than most would ever consider paying in 2012, is the kind of marvel described sometimes as a miracle.
by Aberjhani
5 January, 2012
This is less a formal review of Stanley Booth’s now-classic book, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, than it is a statement of appreciation for the same. In fact, I can state at this time that my biggest criticism of the title, or at least of the edition I own, is that it lacks an index. Having become the modern essential reference text on the Rolling Stones that it is, a reader can only hope that someone plans to publish an edition that contains one. But for the time being I’ll say this––
If you could arrange a chat over a cup of coffee or tea with a literary journalist from any given period –such as Ralph Ellison, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, or Tom Wolfe––about how they accomplished what they have as literary journalists, one thing might soon become clear: a huge part of getting the job done was allowing whatever situation they were covering to swallow them whole. As in mind, body, soul, and the bits and pieces of dreams and nightmares that held their lives together. Apply that concept to the reality of Stanley Booth making his way through the giant waves of counterculture rebellion that swept over the 1960s and a profound mosaic of imagery emerges.
For one, there is the ambitious writer with a distinct literary sensibility born and bred in Waycross, Georgia (where the late great Ossie Davis attended high school) lobbying in England, California, and elsewhere for a contract to write the book now known as The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones with their “full and exclusive cooperation.” There is the artist determined to maintain focus on his work ––taking detailed notes on everything from the style of Keith Richards’ jacket and the impact of Mick Jagger’s toothache on a rehearsal to the polish on B.B. King’s custom-made Gibson guitar and the nearly overwhelming heat generated by Tina Turner’s on-stage sensuality.
Beyond simply noting such observances is an enviable talent for transforming them into transcendent poetry, as with this snapshot of Mick Jagger at the L.A. Forum in 1969 just before he goes onstage: “In the backstage doorway Jagger was standing, dressed in black trousers with silver buttons down the legs, black scoop-neck jersey with white Leo glyph on chest, wide metal-studded black belt, long red flowing scarf, on his head an Uncle Sam hat, his eyes wide and dark, looking like a bullfighter standing in the sun just inside the door of the arena, seeing nothing but the path he walks, toreros and banderilleros beside and behind him, to his fate.”
Along the same lines, Booth writes like something of a natural seer when interpreting certain moments that might be described as the philosophical nuances of the psychedelic times: “It is possible that to know the essence of this moment you would have to be part of the most Damoclean time yet seen on earth… to have come to this music in the innocence of youth because of its humanity… to follow it steadfastly through all manner of troubles, and to have found yourself in a huge dark saucer-mushroom, doing it again, playing for survival, for your life. You had to be there.”
That he was there and allowed the powerful uproar of the 1960s, as set to the music of the Rolling Stones, to swallow him whole in order to deliver an enduring first-hand account of it, is a major part of what makes Booth’s work the titanic achievement that it is. The 1960s laid the groundwork for the end of one era and the beginning of another. By the time Booth hit the road to tag along with the Stones on tour during the latter part of the decade, scenes like those of the recent beatings and pepper-sprayings experienced by Occupy Wall Street protesters were fairly common in the U.S. and elsewhere. So was a seemingly ceaseless flow of marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and other drugs that everyone knew were illegal but which many consumed to sedate themselves from the brutalities of the times (NOTE: Please DO NOT interpret that last statement as an endorsement for the use of hard drugs).
With a string of well-known assassinations, racial tension that boiled over into actual physical clashes, war, and a serious push to reestablish the tenets of sexual expressiveness, the world vibrated from one day to the next between frequencies of barely-contained anarchy and imploding chaos. To place oneself in the burning thick of it all, open-eyed and armed only with a pen, a pad, a Georgia boy’s swamp-grown bravado, and hopes for future literary vindication as Booth did, is every bit as admirable as so many have already said. To have accomplished what he set out to, at a cost much greater than most would ever consider paying in 2012, is the kind of marvel described sometimes as a miracle.
by Aberjhani
5 January, 2012
January 1, 2025
Chilling account of Altamont, etc. from one who was there, and everywhere.
Among its (many) other virtues, the book is in part an ode to the legacy of Brian Jones, the tragic protagonist whose travails caused Booth to cross paths with the Stones in the first place; suitably, it ends at his gravesite. In between, it pays deserved tribute to the intrepid spirit of Keith Richards, the late Gram Parsons and too many more to tell.
It is up there with the masterpieces of nonfiction of its period - Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Capote - and the presence of the author as a first person character is always earned, never forced. (If anything, these days it feels less show-offy than some of the authors just mentioned.)
Those who complain that the book is in some sense a substitute for the raw energy of a Stones performance are missing the point; it's hard earned passion is the equivalent of putting together a great album, something its subjects have largely failed to do in the intervening years.
Rock and roll "literature'' is almost an oxymoron - as Frank Zappa famously put it, it's people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk. Booth somehow manages to capture the spirit of a time with accuracy, love when it's warranted, but absolutely no sentimentality. Riveting.
Update: Re-reading this amazing book, now, in the wake of Mr. Booth's recent passing. One thing I forgot to mention is that in addition to being beyond literate, with chapter headings from Jung and J.B. Priestley, among others - it's also very funny. SB had a Southern Gothic sense of the ridiculous, and had a fine time recounting it. -30-
Among its (many) other virtues, the book is in part an ode to the legacy of Brian Jones, the tragic protagonist whose travails caused Booth to cross paths with the Stones in the first place; suitably, it ends at his gravesite. In between, it pays deserved tribute to the intrepid spirit of Keith Richards, the late Gram Parsons and too many more to tell.
It is up there with the masterpieces of nonfiction of its period - Mailer, Tom Wolfe and Capote - and the presence of the author as a first person character is always earned, never forced. (If anything, these days it feels less show-offy than some of the authors just mentioned.)
Those who complain that the book is in some sense a substitute for the raw energy of a Stones performance are missing the point; it's hard earned passion is the equivalent of putting together a great album, something its subjects have largely failed to do in the intervening years.
Rock and roll "literature'' is almost an oxymoron - as Frank Zappa famously put it, it's people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk. Booth somehow manages to capture the spirit of a time with accuracy, love when it's warranted, but absolutely no sentimentality. Riveting.
Update: Re-reading this amazing book, now, in the wake of Mr. Booth's recent passing. One thing I forgot to mention is that in addition to being beyond literate, with chapter headings from Jung and J.B. Priestley, among others - it's also very funny. SB had a Southern Gothic sense of the ridiculous, and had a fine time recounting it. -30-
January 7, 2018
I liked this book, but feel that it is over rated. This may be due my expectations which hoped for more insights into the Stones themselves. This book read more like a concert report to me, and I expected more. The author's use of heavy and intellectually artistic quotes from music and literature to start off chapters annoyed me. I felt that the quotes were meaningful moments that attempted to flesh out and even mask the surface and boring material in the chapters. Take these interesting quotes out...and it leaves a hole in the book that can't be replaced because these interesting,deep moments don't really materialize (in regular fashion)with the Stones. Some of the most interesting personal material came in stories about the author's(not the stones)life.I did enjoy the book! It's just,man...I know that there has got to be much, much more to the "true adventures" of the rolling stones than what was in this book.
March 1, 2013
The author dominates the book so much you learn very little about the Rolling Stones that you couldn't read in a gossip column. His version of the history of The Stones focuses more on drugs and women than the music, a choice that may sell the book to the public but is hardly a fair assessment of The Stones' contribution to musical history. We hear Mr. Booth whine about his contract, bitch about his life situation and about how many joints he lit, but very little about the subjects of the story. His quotes at the beginning of the chapters are both irrelevant and self-promoting. His elevation of the symbolic importance of Altamont comes across as absurd and pointless. Avoid this book at all costs.
August 4, 2014
Booth's stories about being on the road with Stones in the 60's and especially during the 69 tour were great. This book however was very frustrating at times. The author opens each chapter with a selection (usually long) from an historical piece of literature that doesn't seem to have any relevance to the Stones or their tour. Additionally the author jumps back and forth from chapter to chapter between the 69 tour and previous tours without giving any indication of the year which made it confusing at times.
April 3, 2015
Not ONLY Excellent, but also qualifies as an Anthropological Chronicle ... albeit a tad WARPED, which is NOTHING compared to the '72 STP Bacchanalia we all endured & participated in ... myself, Stanley & Ethan; a writer, a photographer & myself as a "Minister Without Portfolio" ...
ANY "Fan" of Modern Music has to add this book to their library. I have.
ANY "Fan" of Modern Music has to add this book to their library. I have.
June 18, 2021
Can be a bit of a slog at times but this is probably the finest firsthand behind-the-scenes look at the death of the summer of love (and the various cultural shifts of the 60s) that's ever been written. An absolute must-read for Stones fans or people interested in the time period or counterculture.
June 1, 2007
You don't have to give a shit about the Stones to enjoy this book, which is about the Stones the same way that Moby-Dick is about a fish.
January 18, 2015
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 high points 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.
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 high points 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.
July 26, 2016
In the mid-'60s Stanley Booth wrote apparently on spec a sensitively descriptive, narrative piece on Furry Lewis, the one-legged Memphis bluesman, a piece that was not published until Playboy brought it out in 1970 -- but it seems by then to have been enough to secure Booth an agent, a 1968 assignment to go to London and cover the Rolling Stones, and ultimately, a book-contract to tour with the Stones in the aftermath of the death of their bandmate, Brian Jones, and the free July 5, 1969 Hyde Park concert at which they memorialized him.
Booth's book is an account of traveling with the Stones in America from August 1969 to the December 6, 1969 date on which they offered a free concert at Altamont with the Flying Burrito Brothers, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane & CSNY -- a concert at which four people died, plus one, Meredith Hunter, murdered, apparently for dancing with his white girlfriend in the presence of the Hells Angels. Booth continued to travel with the Stones for several years after this, but this book (not published until 1984, under the dumb-bunny title Dance With the Devil), while one half its chapters narrate in oral history the formation of the band, its growing popularity, and its legal troubles and alienation from Jones, in its other half offers a "history's first draft" of that American fall with the Stones, a crucial one both for the country (it was The Days of Rage) and for the band itself.
The book has many flaws, too many to recount here. Its brilliance will not be gainsaid. It provides a documentary account by one flawed eye-witness to the Stones' scene, as that scene is besieged by sharks, hangers-on, groupies, "birds", pimps, mezzes, frauds, pulp heads, and fans, among whom, the author must of course sort himself out. A moment of unprecedented access to the Stones, and to the basic generosity that worked itself out in the collaboration of Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. The moment was beyond ripe, and Stanley Booth made himself a very productive little fruit fly. I resist the metonymy by which destination Altamont is made to substitute for something idealistic in the counter-culture; nonetheless, as agents of that particular form of what Robert Christgau calls "mass bohemianism," the Rolling Stones will not be resisted, indeed, listening to them, one may still reflect on what is most exigent in that form they so beautifully exemplified.
Booth's book is an account of traveling with the Stones in America from August 1969 to the December 6, 1969 date on which they offered a free concert at Altamont with the Flying Burrito Brothers, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane & CSNY -- a concert at which four people died, plus one, Meredith Hunter, murdered, apparently for dancing with his white girlfriend in the presence of the Hells Angels. Booth continued to travel with the Stones for several years after this, but this book (not published until 1984, under the dumb-bunny title Dance With the Devil), while one half its chapters narrate in oral history the formation of the band, its growing popularity, and its legal troubles and alienation from Jones, in its other half offers a "history's first draft" of that American fall with the Stones, a crucial one both for the country (it was The Days of Rage) and for the band itself.
The book has many flaws, too many to recount here. Its brilliance will not be gainsaid. It provides a documentary account by one flawed eye-witness to the Stones' scene, as that scene is besieged by sharks, hangers-on, groupies, "birds", pimps, mezzes, frauds, pulp heads, and fans, among whom, the author must of course sort himself out. A moment of unprecedented access to the Stones, and to the basic generosity that worked itself out in the collaboration of Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. The moment was beyond ripe, and Stanley Booth made himself a very productive little fruit fly. I resist the metonymy by which destination Altamont is made to substitute for something idealistic in the counter-culture; nonetheless, as agents of that particular form of what Robert Christgau calls "mass bohemianism," the Rolling Stones will not be resisted, indeed, listening to them, one may still reflect on what is most exigent in that form they so beautifully exemplified.
July 24, 2012
I had the good fortune of finding this paperback in the Used Books for Sale section of the Evanston Public Library, shortly after getting my first-ever root canal at my dentist, whose office is across the street from the library. I paid a whopping 25¢ (maybe 50¢ - not much, in any case...) for it, and in terms of cost/benefit analysis, it might be the best book I've ever paid for. No less an authority than Peter Guralnick -- who wrote the definitive (two-part) biography of Elvis Presley (Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love -- calls this book "a masterpiece," and I agree.
Though it wasn't published until the mid-1980s, this book focuses on the Stones 1969 tour, with some background exploration of the Stones history through the years leading up to Altamont. Stanley Booth was "embedded" with the Stones for the tour and had exclusive access to them for this book -- access which the Stones probably never granted to another writer again. Booth hangs out with the Stones, eats, drinks, sleeps, gets high with them, and provides an incredible insider's perspective on the Stones and the 1960s. Along with Keith Richards's Life, which I read in 2011, this book should be required reading for all Stones fans, especially those born after this book was published (1984) and wonder how it could be that the greatest hits/tribute band led by Mick & Keith these days was once actually considered "dangerous."
Though it wasn't published until the mid-1980s, this book focuses on the Stones 1969 tour, with some background exploration of the Stones history through the years leading up to Altamont. Stanley Booth was "embedded" with the Stones for the tour and had exclusive access to them for this book -- access which the Stones probably never granted to another writer again. Booth hangs out with the Stones, eats, drinks, sleeps, gets high with them, and provides an incredible insider's perspective on the Stones and the 1960s. Along with Keith Richards's Life, which I read in 2011, this book should be required reading for all Stones fans, especially those born after this book was published (1984) and wonder how it could be that the greatest hits/tribute band led by Mick & Keith these days was once actually considered "dangerous."
September 5, 2023
Less so finished more so came to a natural end. This pile of paper satisfies the deep neglected desire to be a rockstar that I think lies in all of us and certainly in me. And rockstars they were - the stones as in
February 2, 2008
Stanley Booth's writing is fascinatingly poetic, yet well researched, journalistic.
This is the type of journalism that people like Hunter S. Thompson subscribed to, but most professors used to frown upon. I refer to the kind where the author becomes part of the subject and really can't say he's objective.
You might not need to be a fan of the band to enjoy it, but if you are then there's nothing better. The portions about Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Gram Parsons(not a Stone) are great.
It alternates by chapters between the pubescent early days of the formation of the Stones and the even juicier period leading up to the disaster at the Altamont Speedway.
This is the type of journalism that people like Hunter S. Thompson subscribed to, but most professors used to frown upon. I refer to the kind where the author becomes part of the subject and really can't say he's objective.
You might not need to be a fan of the band to enjoy it, but if you are then there's nothing better. The portions about Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Gram Parsons(not a Stone) are great.
It alternates by chapters between the pubescent early days of the formation of the Stones and the even juicier period leading up to the disaster at the Altamont Speedway.
February 28, 2014
This is the most important book about The Rolling Stones ever published.
It covers a period of time when the band was still relevant and the 1960s were reeling to an end.
Stanley Booth is a truly great scribe and his profiles of personalities -those famous and those obscure- are incomparable.
It covers a period of time when the band was still relevant and the 1960s were reeling to an end.
Stanley Booth is a truly great scribe and his profiles of personalities -those famous and those obscure- are incomparable.
March 28, 2016
Way, way too long! He talked about the same things over and over again. How much drugs, sex, and rock and roll do you need to repeat to get the message across? Not a whole lot of new info, really, but hardcore Stones fans might like it.
December 27, 2016
Interesting story behind the tour leading up to Altamont. Many times the story was much more about the author than the band.
May 18, 2018
THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE ROLLING STONES by Stanley Booth offers a inside window into the lives of the Stones during the transition from the Brian Jones era and the Mick Taylor era up to and including the ill-fated Altamont concert.
Booth essentially lived with the band during this period and pretty much tells all; at times in unflattering description of members of the band and events during this period, and while not a gossip book trashing the band it does reveal a bit of favoritism towards certain members i.e. Keith over Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor referred to as “little Mick”, etc.
Great stories of historic events, and very well written accounts of them makes it easy to recommend this book, but with the caveat that the constant flipping back and forth between the Jones and Taylor days could be confusing to those not already knowledgeable of the history of the band.
Highly recommended.
5 stars.
Booth essentially lived with the band during this period and pretty much tells all; at times in unflattering description of members of the band and events during this period, and while not a gossip book trashing the band it does reveal a bit of favoritism towards certain members i.e. Keith over Mick Jagger, Mick Taylor referred to as “little Mick”, etc.
Great stories of historic events, and very well written accounts of them makes it easy to recommend this book, but with the caveat that the constant flipping back and forth between the Jones and Taylor days could be confusing to those not already knowledgeable of the history of the band.
Highly recommended.
5 stars.
January 26, 2020
A totally different angle from the other books I read on the Stones. Written from the perspective of being on tour with them through Brian’s death and Altamont. Incredible stories.
December 30, 2022
Listened to the eAudiobook
September 25, 2022
Problematic in many ways because of when it was written, but compulsively readable.
May 27, 2012
If I had to name a ten-year period of music that is not only my personal favorite, but that I believe has had the greatest impact on modern Western music, it would without question be 1965-1975. The beginning of that time period seems to have marked a quickening of the momentum of the 60's, which was reflected in the music. The Beatles engaged in more complex musical creativity with "Rubber Soul" in 1965, as did Bob Dylan with his rock trilogy of "Bringing It all Back Home", "Highway 61 Revisited", and "Blonde On Blonde". The Stones too had recorded their first full album of original material in '65, released in '66 as "Aftermath". Many other artists were heading in new directions as well, and the music really did reflect the times in a way that hasn't been done since. There was authenticity and a belief in the spirit of change that was an inherent part of society, and was thus reflected in the music. Black music had always been based on social commentary...the blues/spirituals/jazz being the oldest truly original American music, and the decade of '65-'75 saw artists like Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Sly Stone and Tina Turner turning towards more socially conscious and bold lyrics rather than staying restricted to the mold of pop hitmakers. Booth refers to the people - the musical audience - as believing "that dancing and music could have a major role in changing the structure of society. They may have been naive, but they were much more interesting than the sensible people who came along later."
Music does have an unexplainable mystic nature about it that I strongly believe can impact personal change, and maybe societal change too, but not society as we know it or change as we know it. Music to me is more personal - healing, reflective and able to communicate in a way that speech alone cannot. Hence why many of us have music as a part of our lives. it touches something that nothing else can.
Stanley Booth is one of the greatest rock bio writers, and this book is an excellent illustration as to why. His way of capturing the Stones '69 tour was not just about the band, but is also about giving the reader a sense of the context/setting (i.e. time period) in which the tour took place. He takes us right up to the infamous Altamont concert, which was an effective mark and abrupt halt to the spirit of the 60's. The music would continue to express a great deal of unmatched creative power (for the Stones and many others) into the early 70's, but eventually commercialization fully co-opted whatever was left, slowly moving many genuine authentic artists into the realm of indie music.
When I first started in radio, I worked at a station that played 50's, 60's and 70's music, and I've always had an appreciation for the Stones, but over the years they've become my favorite band. Life has made it that way, as I've learned to know what the blues and blues-based music is all about - which is to say adversity and the expression of the pain that accompanies it. It is a knowledge that requires a certain amount of life experience (but not necessarily age) to understand.
Ultimately the music to which we find ourselves listening can tell us a lot about who we are. It is interesting to think back on the artists I've enjoyed over the years, and why I've enjoyed them. This is what this book is about - expressions of an author who loves music, and attempts to portray the reason why he loves it by tying it to a time period, a mood, the experiences of the artists themselves, and the society that listens to them. If you read one book about The Rolling Stones, or even Western music in the 1960's, this should be the one.
March 5, 2017
In the late 1960's Stanley Booth was an aspiring journalist who got an amazing gig: an inside track on a Rolling Stones US tour, with a book contract and a decent advance. Things might have seemed perfect when the tour manager told him said that she'd dreamed that he was going to get to write the book and that it would be good...it was only much later that she told him a crucial detail: that it was going to cost him everything but his life.
For this is a remarkable story: inside access to a cross fire hurricane, a no hold bars proximity to the group that modern PR wouldn't dream of allowing. Its a maelstrom of booze, drugs and women. A journey that at ends with a free concert at the Altamont racetrack, where a member of the audience was murdered by the hell's angels hired to do the security. (Why an earth would you choose a bunch of thugs to keep peace at a show? A rhetorical question: because the official keepers of law and order were at least as violent. The history of sixties counter culture in America is full of young people dying at the hands of the police). For this is an America where the generations are at war with each other. One of the most interesting is the way the apolitical Stones fit into the landscape: for their audience they are making a political statement but this was a group that only ever wanted to play the Blues. Whilst re-enacting the rites of Dionysus. And maybe making a lot of money...
As for the author: well he ended the tour with a drug habit that was hard to break, and a marriage that fell apart when his wife read the notes he'd written on tour. It took fourteen years for the book to appear, the last decade of which were not kind to the book's subject and it disappeared without trace (after all that time he has the audacity to criticize his publisher!). Subsequently re-issued it has now been recognized as a near classic of the new journalism (a few passages show their age, a more sexist time). The book is highly wrought, perhaps showing the signs of constant re-writing, and what should have been the launch pad for a great career turned into a life's work...just tell them you went on tour with Keith Richards.
For this is a remarkable story: inside access to a cross fire hurricane, a no hold bars proximity to the group that modern PR wouldn't dream of allowing. Its a maelstrom of booze, drugs and women. A journey that at ends with a free concert at the Altamont racetrack, where a member of the audience was murdered by the hell's angels hired to do the security. (Why an earth would you choose a bunch of thugs to keep peace at a show? A rhetorical question: because the official keepers of law and order were at least as violent. The history of sixties counter culture in America is full of young people dying at the hands of the police). For this is an America where the generations are at war with each other. One of the most interesting is the way the apolitical Stones fit into the landscape: for their audience they are making a political statement but this was a group that only ever wanted to play the Blues. Whilst re-enacting the rites of Dionysus. And maybe making a lot of money...
As for the author: well he ended the tour with a drug habit that was hard to break, and a marriage that fell apart when his wife read the notes he'd written on tour. It took fourteen years for the book to appear, the last decade of which were not kind to the book's subject and it disappeared without trace (after all that time he has the audacity to criticize his publisher!). Subsequently re-issued it has now been recognized as a near classic of the new journalism (a few passages show their age, a more sexist time). The book is highly wrought, perhaps showing the signs of constant re-writing, and what should have been the launch pad for a great career turned into a life's work...just tell them you went on tour with Keith Richards.
April 21, 2013
Vaguely commissioned to write a book about the Stones, Stanley Booth joined them on their late 1969 US tour, which culminated in the infamous free Altamont Speedway concert. The resulting work alternates chapter-by-chapter between two timelines, one a very good history of the Stones' rise to fame in the 60s, the other the more detailed and first-hand '69 tour diary.
With the benefit of hindsight, Booth is aware of all of that (perhaps overstated) Altamont 'end of an era' baggage, and smartly uses the event as a structural device to build dread into his version of events. He opens the book with a flash-forward - Mick and Keith arrive by night and poke around the place, looking at the desert hippies glugging their jugs of wine, taking in the strange vibe before it all escalates horribly and tragically some hours later. With this rather novelistic trick, he establishes that True Adventures will be unlike most rock writing. It has a fluid, almost novelistic prose style, and when he gets descriptive, Booth's eye (and memory) for detail amongst the haze and chaos of the tour is actually quite incredible. As Greil Marcus points out in the foreword, Booth has largely succeeded in his ambition to channel Raymond Chandler in every sentence. An oddly effective literary role model for a rock bio.
I'd agree that this should appeal even to those who aren't fans of the Stones, but for those who are, it's peppered with priceless insight. For example, the passage about the undercover recording session at Muscle Shoals that begat 'Brown Sugar', 'Wild Horses' and 'You Gotta Move' is thrilling. I've read elsewhere about the Stones sounding hopelessly terrible ("Just awful, like anti-music," in the words of Mick Taylor, their lead guitarist at the time) until their jam somehow stumbles into an epiphany, and I always find accounts of this quite amusing.
There's also some good stuff on Gram Parsons of The Flying Burrito Brothers, who crosses paths with the band several times and was a pal.
With the benefit of hindsight, Booth is aware of all of that (perhaps overstated) Altamont 'end of an era' baggage, and smartly uses the event as a structural device to build dread into his version of events. He opens the book with a flash-forward - Mick and Keith arrive by night and poke around the place, looking at the desert hippies glugging their jugs of wine, taking in the strange vibe before it all escalates horribly and tragically some hours later. With this rather novelistic trick, he establishes that True Adventures will be unlike most rock writing. It has a fluid, almost novelistic prose style, and when he gets descriptive, Booth's eye (and memory) for detail amongst the haze and chaos of the tour is actually quite incredible. As Greil Marcus points out in the foreword, Booth has largely succeeded in his ambition to channel Raymond Chandler in every sentence. An oddly effective literary role model for a rock bio.
I'd agree that this should appeal even to those who aren't fans of the Stones, but for those who are, it's peppered with priceless insight. For example, the passage about the undercover recording session at Muscle Shoals that begat 'Brown Sugar', 'Wild Horses' and 'You Gotta Move' is thrilling. I've read elsewhere about the Stones sounding hopelessly terrible ("Just awful, like anti-music," in the words of Mick Taylor, their lead guitarist at the time) until their jam somehow stumbles into an epiphany, and I always find accounts of this quite amusing.
There's also some good stuff on Gram Parsons of The Flying Burrito Brothers, who crosses paths with the band several times and was a pal.
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