There’s much sleaze to be found in these pages, but precious little about how the Stones forged their rock-’n’-roll art.
Decadence, death and, oh yeah, the making of the quintessential Stones album.
Journalist Greenfield is no stranger to the Rolling Stones’ camp: He penned STP: A Journey Through America With the Rolling Stones, the 1974 fly-on-the-wall account of the English rock band’s ’72 U.S. tour. The current volume is a sort of prequel about the making of the epochal titular two-LP set, cut in 1971–72 under unusually taxing circumstances. Adopting the amused, ironic tone of an 18th-century novelist, Greenfield recounts the aberrant birthing of the album during a blazing summer of sessions at guitarist Keith Richards’s rented mansion in the south of France, where the five Stones escaped tax exile. The writer devotes a few pages to the tensions that arose between his putative “hero” Richards and lead singer Mick Jagger, as a newly detoxed Richards grappled (unsuccessfully) with his heroin addiction and Jagger wrestled with the highfalutin’ demands of his jet-setting new wife Bianca. Engineer Andy Johns chimes in on the difficulties of recording in a jerry-built basement studio so hot that guitars would instantly go out of tune. But the bulk of the book is devoted to the adventures of the Stones’ hangers-on (many of whom would meet dope-related demises not long after that fateful season), the machinations of the local dope-dealers (“les cowboys”) and the addled antics of Richards’s beautiful, deranged significant other, Anita Pallenberg. Exactly how Richards and Jagger managed to find time to write the material for their classic album amid all this madness remains obscure. What matters most to Greenfield are the plentiful sensational aspects of the tale, and the grim fates that awaited the pop stars, Grand Prix drivers and errant heiresses who serve as colorful minor players. The narrative peters out when the Stones travel to the relatively subdued environs of Los Angeles to finish their tortured masterwork.
There’s much sleaze to be found in these pages, but precious little about how the Stones forged their rock-’n’-roll art.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-306-81433-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Da Capo
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2006
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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