Synopses & Reviews
Stanley Booth, a member of the Rolling Stones inner circle, met the band just a few months before Brian Jones drowned in a swimming pool in 1968. He lived with them throughout their 1969 tour across the United States, staying up all night together listening to blues, talking about music, ingesting drugs, and consorting with groupies. His thrilling account culminates with their final concert at Altamont Speedway—a nightmare of beating, stabbing, and killing that would signal the end of a generations dreams of peace and freedom. But while this book renders in fine detail the entire history of the Stones, paying special attention to the tragedy of Brian Jones, it is about much more than a writer and a rock band. It has been called—by Harold Brodkey and Robert Stone, among others—the best book ever written about the 1960s. In Booths afterword, he finally explains why it took him 15 years to write the book, relating an astonishing story of drugs, jails, and disasters. Updated to include a foreword by Greil Marcus, this 30th anniversary edition is for Rolling Stones fans everywhere.
Review
No Depression, 2/22“This is a ridiculously good book of music writing—though, that’s an injustice, it’s a book about soul, and life, and America as much or more as it is about ‘just’ music.”
Review
"A vivid account of life on the edge." —TheWeek.com
Review
“[Stanley Booths] affection for the band did not keep him from writing about the seamy underside of the Stones world in the 1960s. . . . It is the only book about the Stones that I would recommend both to the general reader and to the most devoted fan. Both will find an epiphany on almost every page.” —Robert Palmer, New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Here are Stanley Booth's acclaimed writings about the South and the music that emanates from it. Rythm Oilyou don't have to know how to spell "rhythm" to have it in your body and soulis a potion sold on Beale Street in Memphis. The home of Sun Records, B. B. King, Elvis Presley, Howlin' Wolf, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Memphis is also the home of fantastic stories and broke-down dreams. As Booth makes his way from Memphis to the Mississippi Delta to the depths of the Georgia woods exploring the sounds, the music, and the culture of the American South, "he has produced some of the most gracefully written, thoughtful, and thought-stirring musings on the charactersthe famous and the forgotten, the infamous and the unknownwho command the kingdom or drift through the shadowland of the South's rich-chorded patrimony" (Nick Tosches, Los Angeles Times).
Synopsis
The essence of blues and rock and roll, with legends like Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, and James Brown as only Stanley Booth could portray them.
About the Author
Stanley Booth is the author of Keith: Till I Roll Over Dead and Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South. He has written for Esquire, Playboy, and Rolling Stone. He lives in Athens, Georgia. Greil Marcus is an author and music journalist who has worked for Creem, Rolling Stone, and the Village Voice. He lives in Berkeley, California.