From Publishers Weekly
In 1985's bestselling The Hammer of the Gods: The Led Zeppelin Saga, rock biographer Davis shocked and entertained readers with the raunchy details of the band's backstage exploits. In this latest unauthorized biography, he once again details the "musical successes and personal excesses" but fails to offer any new insights into one of the world's greatest bands. (Stanley Booth's 1985 The True History of the Rolling Stones covers much of the same ground). In the first bio on the Stones in more than a decade, Davis begins with the band's first big break as the intermission act at London's Marquee Club in 1962 and ends with their bloated global tours of the late 1990s. While Davis's pulpy narrative ("The smell of espresso is in the air, the smell of sex, the smell of suicide") provides an enjoyable recap and critique of the Stones' records and performances, he misses the most interesting aspect of their longevity. Namely, why do these middle-aged men, once embodying the very pinnacle of renegade youth, choose to keep on as mere shadows of their former selves? This refusal to move on, despite one uninspired disc after another, is the most fascinating part of the Stones' past 15 years. Rock critic John Strausbaugh's Rock 'Til You Drop: The Decline from Rebellion to Nostalgia tackles the subject of has-been rockers in general and features Mick Jagger on the cover, but an account focused on the Stones' slide into irrelevance has yet to be written. 48 b&w photos not seen by PW. (On sale Nov. 6)Forecast: Despite its faults, this book will sell well to the Stones' many fans, as well as to nostalgic baby boomers.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Davis, chronicler of Led Zeppelin's decadence in the best seller Hammer of the Gods (LJ 6/15/85), draws on 30 years of covering the Rolling Stones to relate their triumphs and failures. There's enough sex, drugs, and debauchery here to titillate most readers, but Davis remains neutral, letting his audience make their own judgments. Though an entertaining storyteller, Davis is sometimes sloppy with his facts (e.g., the Rolling Stones's faces do not appear on the cover of the Beatles's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, as he claims, nor has his offhand assertion that Beatles manager Brian Epstein committed suicide ever been proven). As usual, bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts are reduced to mere sketches in the shadows of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Stones founder Brian Jones, the book's tragic hero. Much like the Stones's own career arc, the latter pages covering the group's last 15 years of mediocre albums and increasingly glitzy tours grind into tedium. However, Davis's use of short, staccato bursts of text mirrors Jagger's nervous onstage energy. As one of the few serious Stones biographies published in recent years, this is recommended for popular music collections. Davis will soon have competition when Philip Norman's revised The Stones (originally published as Sympathy for the Devil in the United Kingdom in 1984) debuts in the United States. (Photographs not seen..
- Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
- Lloyd Jansen, Stockton-San Joaquin Cty. P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
