Overview

A new, updated edition of Christopher Sandford's classic biography of the band, The Rolling Stones is a gripping account of the band's remarkable 60 years at the top of the rock industry.  In 1962 Mick Jagger was a bright, well-scrubbed boy (planning a career in the civil service), while Keith Richards was learning how to smoke and to swivel a six-shooter. Add the mercurial Brian Jones (who'd been effectively run out of Cheltenham for theft, multiple impregnations and playing blues guitar), the wryly opinionated Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts, and the potential was obvious. During the 1960s and 70s the Rolling Stones were the polarising figures in Britain, admired in some quarters for their flamboyance, creativity and salacious lifestyles, and reviled elsewhere for the same reasons. Confidently expected never to reach 30, the band is now celebrating 60 years together with a European tour, Sixty, to mark the occasion. Of the original line-up, only Jagger and Richards remain, along with 'new boy' Ronnie Wood, who joined the band in 1975.  In The Rolling Stones, Christopher Sandford tells the human drama at the centre of the Rolling Stones story. Sandford has carried out interviews with those close to the Stones, family members (including Mick's parents), the group's fans and contemporaries - even examined their previously unreleased FBI files. Like no other book before The Rolling Stones makes sense of the rich brew of clever invention and opportunism, of talent, good fortune, insecurity, self-destructiveness, and of drugs, sex and other excess, that made the Stones who they are.

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9781398520325

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Reviews

'Sandford gamely makes his way through the binges and the arrears, the marital break-ups and the internecine feuds, and finds an uproarious comedy in the luxuriant squalor and knockabout chaos of it all.' * Observer * 'A highly professional reference biography that, if you pardon the expression, leaves no Stone unturned and is by no means bereft of memorable anecdotes.' -- Charles Shaar Murray * Literary Review * 'Sex and the Stones laid bare in candid new book.' * Sun * '[Sandford] does a good job of giving us the full story in humorous tones. Tales of friendships, flings, rivalries (especially the central one between Jagger and Richards) are all told with welcome irreverence.' * Independent * 'A new book on the Rolling Stones reveals Mick Jagger once arrived on court for a tennis match against Keith Richards togged out in Wimbledon-style whites. Keef rolled up in cut-off jeans, with a fag in his mouth and thrashed Mick 6-1. What s not to love about the guy?' * People *

Author Information

Christopher Sandford has been a professional writer for 40 years and a frequent writer about the Rolling Stones for more than 30. He has published many previous books and is the only writer to have written biographies of both Mick Jagger, 'the classic biography' (The Times) and Keith Richards 'Sandford's affectionate, warts-and-all portrait of Keith is undoubtedly the best read' (Sunday Telegraph). 

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