October 19, 2003

'According to the Rolling Stones': Please Allow Us to Introduce Ourselves

idway through their 1982 European tour, the Rolling Stones gave a party for their crew. The entertainment was provided by a local D.J. with a fondness for very bad disco. This affection showed no signs of abating until the Stones' lead guitarist, Keith Richards, no Village People buff he, wandered up to the D.J., unsheathed a bowie knife and pressed it directly against his throat. Sure, Richards knew it was only disco. But he didn't like it.

Whether or not this story is true -- it is reported by no less an authority than Peter Wolf, the former lead singer of the J. Geils Band, in the Stones' oral history, ''According to the Rolling Stones'' -- the anecdote embodies the us-versus-them, this-versus-that philosophy that makes Richards such a beloved pop-cultural figure. Chastened by their one brief, disastrous concession to fashion in the late 60's, when they fleetingly fell under the spell of the Beatles and released the god-awful ''Their Satanic Majesties Request,'' the Rolling Stones have spent the past 35 years preaching and repreaching the gospel of rock 'n' roll. No folk. No smooth jazz. No emo. No really bad disco.

Starting out as young English urbanites who borrowed from old rural Americans to create a hybrid genre that is still immensely popular with middle-aged suburbanites everywhere, the Stones have become the equivalent of the Himalayas: very old, very imposing, very resistant to change and dwarfing everything else in the landscape. In fairness to Mount Everest, its northern face has aged slightly better than Richards's has.

Masters of marketing, repackaging geniuses -- it is almost impossible to keep track of the number of greatest-hits compilations the band has released over the years -- the extant Stones (only three of the original quintet remain) recently decided to compile their own official history of the band. A coffee-table book, to be sure, but a very entertaining coffee-table book, ''According to the Rolling Stones'' is almost entirely about music, with Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Richards, the last three remaining original members, doing most of the talking. Readers looking for any further chilling, first-person accounts of Richards's knife-brandishing exploits will be sadly disappointed.

The first half of the book is by far the best. Hypnotized by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Chuck Berry, and to a lesser extent by Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Everly Brothers, two shy teenagers (Jagger and Richards) decide to start their very own pop combo. Almost immediately, they become the second-greatest band in the world; then, after the Beatles split up, the greatest. The Stones still seem mystified by the speed with which their careers took off, and believe they would have flamed out quickly had they not been forced to write their own songs by their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Generous toward their peers (the Beatles, Elton John, Michael Jackson), contemptuous of second-stringers (the Hollies, Herman's Hermits), the Stones love to talk inside baseball. Indeed, for a coffee-table book loaded with photos, ''According to the Rolling Stones'' can get remarkably technical.

Jagger is particularly good on set design, record production, touring logistics. Richards likes nothing more than discussing the recording devices he used to get particular sounds on songs like ''Jumpin' Jack Flash.'' Watts loves to talk about band dynamics, as well as the equipment employed on songs like ''Street Fighting Man,'' which ''was recorded on Keith's cassette with a 1930's toy drum kit called a London Jazz Kit Set, which I bought in an antiques shop, and which I've still got at home. It came in a little suitcase, and there were wire brackets you put the drums in; they were like small tambourines with no jangles. The whole kit packs away, the drums go inside each other, the little drum goes inside the snare drum into a box with the cymbal. The snare drum was fantastic because it had a really thin skin with a snare right underneath, but only two strands of gut.'' Somehow, one doubts that when ''According to the Backstreet Boys'' is published in 2040, the details about percussion will be quite so exhaustive.

Jagger, who became hooked on applause at the age of 4 when he performed ''Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered'' at a Christmas gathering, does not hesitate to discuss the band's failures. For example, even though ''Exile on Main Street,'' released in 1972, is viewed by many critics as the band's greatest record, Jagger dislikes it.

''When I listen to 'Exile,' '' he explains, ''it has some of the worst mixes I've ever heard. I'd love to remix the record, not just because of the vocals, but because generally I think it sounds lousy. . . . 'Exile' is really a mixture of bits and pieces left over from the previous album. . . . Those were mixed up with a few slightly more grungy things done in the south of France. It's seen as one album all recorded there and it really wasn't. We just chucked everything in. As long as people like the album, that's fine. It's just that I don't particularly think it's a great album.''

A good deal of the book is devoted to the rise and fall of the self-destructive proto-metrosexual Brian Jones, who died of mysterious causes in 1969. A good though not great guitarist, but a highly accomplished drug addict, Jones eventually became a legitimate threat to the stability of the Stones, who were rapidly evolving from a band into an industry. Richards, who stole his sidekick's girlfriend the same day he was chauffeuring Jones to a hospital, says, ''What really killed Brian . . . was not getting the mixture right between the music and the fame.'' This is quite an indictment, coming from a man who did not kick his own heroin habit until confronted by the prospect of a lengthy jail term in Canada in the mid-70's.

The book has some notable omissions. Bill Wyman, the enigmatic Stones bassist until 1992, when he decided to stop being enigmatic and stay home, is not interviewed. Neither is the group's former guitarist Mick Taylor, by far the best musician ever to play in the now geriatric ensemble. Almost nothing is said about the band's craven abdication of responsibility at the Altamont concert in 1969, where a young black man was stabbed to death at an event where security was provided by members of the Hell's Angels. Who'd have thunk it? Jagger and Richards do not even mention the incident, which is widely thought to have officially ended the Age of Aquarius; Watts skates over it as just another bad-boy mishap.

Quite naturally, since the band is still pushing ''Forty Licks,'' yet another greatest-hits package with a few new duds sprinkled in, the Stones prattle on about records like ''Voodoo Lounge'' and ''Bridges to Babylon'' as if their recent work were somehow in the same class as the great records of their youth. It's not, but then again Duke Ellington's autumnal ''Satin Doll'' is treacle compared with his youthful classic ''Mood Indigo.'' It's worth noting that on the ''Forty Licks'' tour, the show consisted largely of material recorded before Ronnie Wood, another good but not great guitarist, joined the band. The Stones are haunted by the specter of the unfortunate Mick Taylor, who helped them make their greatest records when he was young, lean and mean, but never amounted to much as a solo act.

In addition to the Stones' reminiscences, each chapter contains a brief, self-congratulatory essay by a photographer, producer, financier, critic or fellow rock star. Basically, these people are here to remind readers that the Stones are really, really cool and that it's really cool to hang out with guys who are this cool. Gushes Edna Gundersen, pop music critic at USA Today, ''As a budding flower child in high school, I grooved on Jimi Hendrix and idolized Bob Dylan, but it was the mystique of the Rolling Stones that steered me towards a career in rock journalism.'' Well, golly, aren't USA Today readers the lucky ones!

The glorified backup singer Sheryl Crow, no less star-struck but considerably more perceptive, puts the whole Stones legacy in perspective when she says: ''I will never know what it is like to be the kind of rock star the Stones are. They simply wrote the book and the rest of us are imitators.'' True, it is a bit self-serving for the Stones to include this sort of testimonial in their own autobiography. But Crow is right. Sorry, Metallica. Sorry, Strokes. Sorry, R.E.M. Sorry, Mr. Timberlake. It'd be nice to be as famous and influential and enduring and all-round ornery as the Rolling Stones. But you can't always get what you want.