THE ROLLING STONES

Sturdy biography of the iconic if now superannuated bad boys of rock ’n’ roll.

“Mick had always sworn that he couldn’t see himself singing ‘Satisfaction’ when he was fifty,” writes seasoned music journalist Spitz. Yet here he is, beyond 80, singing away, a survivor, like bandmate Keith Richards, of seven decades in the biz. That the band would have come so far didn’t seem like it was in the cards way back in early 1963, when a blues-smitten London School of Economics student named Mike Jagger first took the stage with Richards—to the chagrin of musician-impresario Alexis Korner, who likened Jagger’s smooth moves to Marilyn Monroe. But Jagger was a couldn’t-stand-still machine, trained as an athlete in his youth by his gym teacher father and, though no stranger to rock excess, also supremely disciplined. Spitz’s biography extends the late, great Stanley Booth’s True Adventures of the Rolling Stones up to the present, albeit the present is mostly an endless revisitation of the past, with Richards defiantly proclaiming, “This is not something you retire from.” And if the Glimmer Twins haven’t made a truly memorable album for half a century, they stand as an object lesson not just in stamina but in business acumen, something would-be entrepreneurs would benefit from studying. Spitz pulls together the well known but adds insightful moments, especially in his study of Brian Jones’ steady decline into addiction and madness; he also delivers bits and pieces of news, such as the fact that Jagger tried to recruit Ron Wood when Jones was first fired, settling for Mick Taylor when the Small Faces refused to let Wood go. (Wood finally joined in 1975.) More than anything, Spitz offers a good explanation for why the Stones have endured, filthy rich while continuing to present themselves as unwholesome, dangerous street rats: “The blues the Stones played was explicitly sexual, provocative, rough around the edges, and rebellious.”

A treasure trove for Stones fans.