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.
