Bob Spitz’s The Rolling Stones is what is known in publishing as a cat killer. That is, it’s so big — 690 pages — it could kill your moggy, should it come through your letterbox. Besides a dead cat, you’d also be left with a rather turgid history of a band whose history we already know so much about. I’ve read dozens of books about the Rolling Stones, and judging by Spitz’s tremendously boring book, so has he. There is nothing new here, and it repeats all the rock ’n’ roll stories we’ve read a hundred times before. It also pretty much ends in the 1980s, thereby ignoring the band’s recent return to glory, with their fabulous 2023 album Hackney Diamonds. What amazes me is how he got this book published.
I’ve also read dozens of books about the Beatles, and the publication of Craig Brown’s One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time and Ian Leslie’s John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs have both proved it’s possible to look at their story in a completely original and commercially successful way.
So why aren’t publishers doing the same thing with the Stones? The band ceased to be just a rock group decades ago, and because they became part of the cultural firmament, have become legitimate subjects for proper investigation. Where is Prince Rupert Loewenstein, the band’s manager who wrote a disobliging memoir? What about the band’s relationship with super producer Andrew Watt? Or Mick Jagger’s fascinating love life? Or Mick Taylor’s bitterness, Keith Richards’ sense of humour, or the attempts to preserve their legacy when they are gone? Honestly, there are so many Rolling stories that haven’t been written about, and none is in this book.
If I’m being unkind, this reads like someone put the band’s Wikipedia entry into ChatGPT and then hoped for the best.
The sad thing is that it’s actually the result of painstaking research. Shame the resultant book isn’t worthy of it.
The Rolling Stones by Bob Spitz is out now (Michael Joseph, £30)
