Customer Reviews

S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A readable and interesting book. I wasn't that interested in those on the peripherals of the Stones touring party, which fills much of this book, but the bits including the Stones themselves are very interesting and entertaining. In the intro, the author says this book has been out of print since 1974, and just got back in print in June, 2002. (I just read a passing reference to it in the Nov., 2002 issue of VOGUE. First I'd heard about it.) He's there when Mick and Keith get arrested for hitting a photographer. He's there when the Governor of Rhode Island tells the chief of police to spring Mick and Keith from jail, for public safety (the waiting audience for a Stones show could riot if deprived of the Stones!). He's there to show that being on tour with the greatest rock and roll band in the world CAN, truly and believably, get mind-numbingly dull. It's an interesting inside look, by a journalist who is impressively objective. (He doesn't despise nor worship the Stones, and actually gives an interesting run down of why, at that time, the Stones actually were NOT very wealthy, despite ten years of success. That's changed since, of course.) Worth reading if you're a Stones fan.

I read this book sometime around 1975 when it first surfaced as a highly literate diary chronicling the Rolling Stones 1972 tour of America.Basking in the reflected glory of the (then and arguably still)'greatest rock n' roll band in the world';the author is afforded access all areas,and guides the reader from bickering rehearsal sessions,through rigid security meetings and late flights,until finally you are granted a carte blanche ticket for the greatest show on earth.Greenfield's cultured and informative reporting hurls you head-first into the crazed and ruthless world of the maelstrom that is The Rolling Stones in all their sometimes heavy-handed glory.Wonderfully entertaining stories unfold throughout this incredible journey as the outlaws
in love march like kings,across the decadent sprawling lawns of
mighty America.Pure zeitgeist.Great stuff.
After reading this book you just wanna'play 'Exile on Main St.'
at serious volume and wish that you never had to go to work again.(Oh'well..)

Whoa! This is a thorougly enjoyable book all the way through.I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer who stated this is "One of the greatest rock books ever written";it's certainly the best rock and roll book I've ever read, and I actually am not that much of a Stones fan. This book could have been done as a quick, tabloid rock tour journal, but the writing is absolutely superb and fascinating all the way through, the story decadently entertaining.Bravo Mr.Greenfield!

Greenfield also wrote a book about the Stones' Exile on Main Street sessions, a flawed tome about a fascinating moment in rock `n' roll history (perhaps the most fascinating). And while that book has been derided and mocked somewhat, I somehow learned more about the Stones in it than I did in this book, which I had high hopes for but which ultimately disappointed me with its shapelessness and its many, many "who cares moments".

The book hardly features the Stones, going more into the setup of touring, the mechanics of it, the madness, the insanity, the transportation and some of the parties. In this way, it's a bit like some sort of nutty rock `n' roll staging Apocalypse Now, complete with its very own new journalism McGuffin. There are a few incidents recounted, such as a scuffle with a photographer and an arrest in Rhode Island as Boston burns (the book's most dramatic, feel-good moment). There's the opening of the tour in Vancouver, the dates in San Francisco and hanging out with Bill Graham (who Greenfield has also written a biography of), there's encounters with kids queuing up to buy tickets and girls like Cynthia and Jo-Ann, who are hitch hiking between shows; there's the boredom and insanity of being in the middle of nowhere and there's groupies like Renee being set up for the risque parts of the film that Robert Frank is making during the tour - hey, he gets as much screen time as any of the other principals. Greenfield quotes Charles Bukowski, on Mick Jagger, in the LA Free Press:

He tried. And he was wonderful. He spilled more blood on that floor than a five thousand-man army but he didn't make it. He'd been tricked into acceptance... He was tired. He was too much money in. He was too famous. He sucked at the crowd He tried to remember how it was when he first worked it. How it was when he was really and purely real...

The book mistakenly notes that Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham had forced Bill Wyman to change his name from Bill Perks, I remember him saying in his autobiography that he'd done this on his own even before he joined the Rolling Stones. Nice interviews with Charlie Watts. Not much about Mick Taylor, who is still a mystery man. Printing goof-up on P137.

Transporting the Stones to parties, moving from city to city, getting stuck in traffic, all the mundanities of being on tour. Great description of life at Hugh Hefner's Mansion in Chicago, including a reproduction of memos to the bunnies. Funny Truman Capote anecdotes ("They're complete idiots... Intuition tells me they'll never tour this country again, and in fact will not exist in three years."), since he was there as a writer (although he decided later not to write the story he was preparing), Terry Southern also. Nice anecdotes with Bobby Keys about his days working with Buddy Holly, Bobby Vee, and Delaney and Bonnie. Greenfield describes a cool Keys anecdote of his days on the road with Vee, rehearsing in Moorhead, Minnesota:

This kid came in, asking for a gig as a piano player. He said his name was Eldon Gunn and he liked playing Hank Williams' stuff. Everyone in the wand was into wide silk ties, high collar shirts, and Aqua-Net to keep their James Dean hairdos in place, and the kid just didn't fit. So they told him to go home and practice some more and come back when your act's together, and instead he went to New York and became a folksinger by the name of Bob Dylan.

There are also tales of real fear as the band gets their equipment dynamited in Montreal (four times!), and Jagger is terrified of being assassinated, either by Hell's Angels still brimming over the Stones' betrayal at Altamont or by Manson Family crazies. What a life, man, what a life, and the Stones have been doing this fifty years this year!!!

An excellent book by a man who actually witnessed the events he recounts. Considered by many to be the peak of the Stones' performing career, their 1972 tour of America certainly deserved to be covered in detail and Mr. Greenfield did so. He was also filing regular reports for Rolling Stone magazine during the tour and these are paraphrased throughout. The book would have been better if he had used the original material from RS, but this is a minor quibble. It's a must-have for anyone wanting to read about the Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band In The World at the height of their powers. And the recently released DVD of the superb 72 tour movie Ladies And Gentlemen The Rolling Stones is another must-have for any Stones fan.

"I think I the only rock star never to have worn beads" Charlie Watts

A real gem this. I was also reading Keith Richards new bio kind at the same time and they are great compliments and also pretty much corroborate each other, which gives me a warm glow. Obviously Greenfield is coming from a different angle to Richards, and whilst he often writes like a non-judgemental gentlemanly observer, he eventually does put the knife in, particularly to Truman Capote and Jackie O's sister. As categorised in many a rock book over the years, the only people that survive the travelling royal court that is a rock tour are the princes themselves - the bloody band. Everybody else is in that hurry up and wait frame of mind which encourages more drug use, more sex and more depression. Perhaps the smartest man on the stones tour here was Bob Gibson, the manager who quit after about two weeks - he knew what it would be like down the road. But much credit to the Stones - the greatest rock n roll band of all time - for doing this time after time. The dysfunction has a kind of function, a method to all the madness. For all the other hard touring bands that came after - Led Zep, Motley Crue, Aerosmith el al - the Stones wrote the guidebook, all that could be increased was the dysfunction, the drug-use, and the damage....

Some people, I swear. I'm getting not helpful reviews because I point out this guy's very weak skills as an author and his pathetic research that yielded numerous factual errors? go figure. The book is crap and doesn't even deserve 4 stars. Make it 2.

Greenfield's first book on the Rolling Stones chronicling their North American tour of 1972 is far better than his recent "Exile On Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones". I enjoyed the style of writing and the bird's eye view of things that went on during the tour. I knew that the Stones' touring party was typically fairly depraved but I really had no idea of the extent of that depravity. I hate to be all PC and all that but young women (girls really) were treated as something to use and throw away. There are several accounts of young women who, while not part of the Stones Touring Party, were highly visible throughout the tour, used up for sordid entertainment, allowed themselves to be completely humiliated without even realizing it (the airplane film incident), and discarded like garbage. It's very sad the things that some of these young women did in order to be near that glittering star. I wonder how they feel today? Everything had to be cleared by Jagger and Richards, these two men have much to atone for, really.

There are some really dumb and glaring mistakes and that fact that this is a second edition publication make them unforgivable really:

For example, on page 115 Greenfield tells us about how a young Mick Taylor took Eric Clapton's place in Mayall's Blues Breakers. Greenfield must have smoked an awful lot of dope in his day. Anyone who knows ANYTHING about the music of that era knows that Peter Green (who went on to found the original Fleetwood Mac) replaced Clapton. Mick Taylor replaced Peter Green. Duh? That's rock-guitar history/appreciation 101 and Greenfield gets a big fat "F"

On page 117 Greenfield mentions men in Denver washing their cars in the drive way and wondering what kind of season the Denver Bears were going to have... What? While it is true that in the late 50's and very early 60's Denver did have a semi-pro football team called the Denver Bears (almost NO-ONE in Denver remembers this), by 1972, Bronco mania had long taken hold in Denver (I was there). The Broncos were just a couple of years shy of their first appearance in a string of many very disappointing Superbowl performances (thank God they got that monkey of their backs).

Didn't this guy have an editor? Who proofed this darn thing? Presumably a member of the Stones Touring Party who was just as stoned as everyone else. Again, this is a second edition boys and girls. Mistakes like the two cited above are good examples of shoddy authorship and editing. Maybe some writing course will use them as examples.

Those two mistakes are glaring and it leaves me wondering about how many not so glaring mistakes this book also contains.

Why would anyone want to read a book about a tour that took place more than 30 years ago, in support of what is arguably the Rolling Stones most overrated album?? (Yes, Exile on Main Street does have some very good material, and excellent performances, but the "bathroom" (read: poor) sound quality, heralded by too many critics as being "influential" does not hold up well after all these years. Some of us would like to understand the lyrics, please!) Because the book is very well written by a good, observant, refreshingly unbiased journalist, and because like Jim Bouton's baseball classic Ball Four, S.T.P. was one of the first books that spawned an entire genre of rock books about specific bands. Many of the episodes still hold interest today, particularly the Playboy Mansion scenes in Chicago, and the details of the bands arrest and subsequent release (arranged by then-Mayor of Boston Kevin White to prevent a riot) from a Rhode Island jail: the Stones were supposed to be playing a concert at the very moment they were incarcerated. Many interesting characters stand out as well, particularly Truman Capote, Princess Lee Radziwill, and Jagger himself. One thing I feel must be noted: If you are younger than fortysomething, you may be surprised at the sheer amount of ANGER felt by many of the kids, who were just itching to clash with police. In many ways, that was typical of the times, and thankfully, for the most part, such behavior would not be tolerated today. In sum, if you are a Stones fan, or a fan of great rock writing, get S.T.P. ASAP. Trust me, like the namesake gas treatment, it'll put a tiger in your tank!!!

The first hundred or so pages are so fixated on Mick Jagger that you wonder if Mr Greenfiel is ever going to notice that the Rolling Stones consist of way more than a frontman. But once he finally does realize that - apparently a concert or two was enough to convince him - it's a pretty good read. There are some obvious inaccuracies (including mistaking butterflies for doves); and the stuff about the people and events orbiting around the Stones on this tour is sometimes overlong. Some of it, though, works nicely to bring back the atmosphere of the times.

It's unfortunate that Mr Greenfiel didn't have the courtesy to correct Keith's surname in this re-edition - who cares how the publicists were misspelling it at the time?! That grates, as do the lame attempts to capture regional pronunciation. Just talk normal, please, Mr Greenfiel! And repeat after me: it's *Richards*.

In other words: Stanley Booth's _True Adventures of the Rolling Stones_ is miles better - really fine writing, a superior grasp of what the Stones are about, *and* he knows what Keith's surname is - but this one'll do between re-readings of Stanley's.