Customer Reviews

The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record

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First and foremost, a message to Roy Carr: PLEASE do an update of this brilliant piece of work. Your opinions on 'Love You Live' through 'A Bigger Bang' and (soon) the 'Shine a Light' soundtrack would instantly dwarf all the witless, error ridden books by self proclaimed 'experts' on the Stones that spew forth like monthly periodicals these days. Bowie and Beatles revisions too (and maybe a new one on the Who?) but let nothing stand in the way of 'The Rolling Stones: An Illustrated Record (2008)'! Now the review...

It is an absolute privilege and honor...not to mention a shock...to be the first one to write a review on this spectacularly well conceived book by Roy Carr. In format, writing style, understanding of his subject, and opinion it is superb. He's an authority on the subject, not requiring the assistance of Tony Tyler or Charles Shaar Murray for his equally brilliant and fun books on (respectively) the Beatles and Bowie. If only he'd done the same on Roxy Music, the Who and Zeppelin...or crossed the Atlantic and shared his insights on the works of Bob Dylan, the Doors, and Iggy Pop as well.

The very first page alone is worth the price of the book! After putting his finger precisely on what made Guy Peelart's portraits resonate so accurately with that undefinable mythos that we all sense in the Stones, Carr then describes an eye witness account (as one of the blues artists opening for them at an early 1964 concert) of not only their...to this day...hilariously unchanged 'devil may care' approach to everything, but the absolute mayhem that their unique ambience nevertheless ignites despite their half asleep indifference to anyone or anything! The street punk cockiness of Keith Richards... even then, 44 years ago...is characterized to perfection ("slashing carelessly at his guitar, looking like he just got out of bed") then likened to a similar situation at Altamont five years later. Carr understands and admires the truly, far and away most legendary punk of all time. Keith is not just the soul of the Stones (albeit complementing Jagger's role as mind), he is the soul of this entire dog's breakfast of musical forms known as rock.

After that Carr embarks on a concise but fascinating, complete, event by event, insider history of the band with exquisitely appropriate photos, quotes, and clippings (including the set list from the Stones very first 1962 concert as scrawled by then member Ian Stewart in his pocket daytimer!) inserted in flawless chronological order. This is interspersed with reviews of all UK single, LP, and even compilation releases of recordings, all described and reviewed intelligently (with the possible exception of 'Between the Buttons', which I personally don't consider quite as abysmal as Carr appears to). He even articulates the relation of the times to particular releases, and vice versa: 'Goat's Head Soup', which is only now regarded as having some great moments, is defended in it's era with the submission that people often miss some great music because they continue to guage what the artist does by what they did years earlier. Carr says essentially that different or evolved does not have to mean better or worse, opening the door to 'Soup's' qualities decades before the aging, nostalgic Rolling Stone editors sentimentally lightened up and changed their minds about it.

The book concludes with flawless discographies of corresponding US releases, solo and guest appearances, a comprehensive list of tour concert dates, films, and even a brief and cursory pictorial overview of key bootleg recordings available at the time of publication in 1977 (all vinyl in those days!)

A fairly lengthy and interestingly structured interview with Jagger by the author is quite fascinating as well.

As I said earlier most books published since vary from indispensable (Booth's 'True Adventures', Flippo's 'On the Road...', and Greenfield's 'STP') to worthwhile and informative but affected (Davis' 'Old Gods...' and Christopher Sandford's biographies of Jagger and Richards) to silly or uncaringly ill informed (respectively 'Song by Song' something or other and anything Martin Elliot etc. etc....they are endless).

In terms of comparable recording reviews, James Karnbach's It's Only Rock-N-Roll: The Ultimate Guide to the Rolling Stones is the slightly technically flawed but very fun and well laid out best, with every detail that could possibly be of interest to the intermediate Stones afficianado. For the truly obsessed, only Nico Zentgraf's scholarly approach and delightfully anal attention to completism and accuracy will suffice! Neither of these works review the recordings at all, they are purely technical...locations, dates, overdubs etc.. For insight in to the art, collect the Rolling Stone and Creem magazine reviews from over the years: they are the most musically and culturally literate and are contemporaneous with the release dates (and therefore not nostalgically biased). The Rolling Stone Record Guide: Reviews and Ratings of Almost 10,000 Currently Available Rock, Pop, Soul, Country, Blues, Jazz, and Gospel Albums has abridged overviews that are also good. The 1980, 1990, and 2004 versions are all different and quite comical in how they cyclically contradict each other on the merits and weaknesses of many albums by the Stones and virtually every artist (Iggy, for example, is a washed up, wanna be, one or two star flake in 1980, but by 1990 he's the progenitor of punk, grunge, and the new wave, and by 2004 he's a genius with as great a talent and legacy as anyone and four or five stars all the way. The later recants on the Doors and Zeppelin slaggings in the 1980 version are even worse).

Finally, in reference to my heading, if you're waiting with baited breath for my NUMBER ONE Stones book, it is irrefutably David Dalton's Rolling Stones An Unauthorized Biography in Words, Photographs, and Music.. This was the first intelligent, analytical look at the Stones as artists and a social force (when they still legitimately were one!), and also compiled the best that had been written about them up to that time (it was compiled around the time Exile was being recorded and even includes some then current images from Nellcote). This book is equalled (and so complemented) only by his follow up 'The First Twenty Years' ten years later. There are alot of interesting authorities on the Stones around, but Dalton is totally in a category by himself...he invented the intelligent documentation and commentary on them that many have since emmulated with wildly varying degrees of success.

You will not be disappointed by tracking down and forking out for these long out of print volumes by Carr and Dalton.