Bob Spitz proves Rolling Stones are rock’s greatest band in epic new biography

By early 1963, London’s Station Hotel had become the center of the burgeoning British blues scene. On a stormy, snowy night in February, the early classic lineup of the Rolling Stones took the stage for the first time, captivating the crowd with blistering renditions of blues standards such as Muddy Waters’ “I Want to Be Loved” and Jimmy Reed’s “Bright Lights, Big City.”

The band’s founder and leader, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, synced guitars with Keith Richards, who favored a unique, slashing style. Drummer Charlie Watts, the group’s newest member, was a jazz enthusiast and accomplished percussionist who propelled the music forward with rock-solid beats.

Supporting the rhythm section with him was bassist Bill Wyman, who was hired more for his spare VOX AC30 amplifier that the guitarist could plug in than for his musical skills. The stoic bassist proved to be a powerful and innovative player. Together, he and Watts would form one of rock’s most decorated rhythm sections.

Ian Stewart’s energetic boogie-woogie piano style completed the sound. A few months later, manager Andrew Loog Oldham kicked Stewart out of the band for being “ugly”, but Stewart continued to record, tour, and serve as the band’s road manager until his death in 1985.

Mick Jagger was at the front of the group. Channeling the music like a deranged shaman, Jagger cringed and croaked, dominating the stage like few lead singers before or since. By the end of the night, the Stones had the crowd going wild. Due to dangerous weather conditions, only 30 people made it to the gig, but the hotel’s reservation agent was smart enough to offer the Stones a regular gig.

“The Rolling Stones were on fire. The music they were playing and the way they played it struck a chord with a young crowd hungry for something different, something uniquely their own…It was soul-stirring, loud, and uncompromising,” Bob Spitz wrote in The Rolling Stones: A Biography, his great book chronicling the 60-year journey of “the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band.”

The author of powerful biographies about the Beatles and Led Zeppelin, as well as Ronald Reagan and Julia Child, Spitz captures the drama, trauma and betrayal that has kept the Stones in the public consciousness for more than 60 years. Everything is here. The evolution of the Stones from a blues cover band to an artistic rival to the Beatles. Musical peaks like “Aftermath,” “Let It Bleed,” “Exile on Main Street,” and duds like “Dirty Work.” Keith developed a debilitating heroin addiction that nearly destroyed him and the band. Death at the ill-fated Altamont free concert in the 60’s. Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Bianca Jagger, Jerry Hall and other lovers, partners and muses. Break up, make up, fight. And perhaps most importantly, at the heart of it all is the unbreakable bond between Jagger and Richards.

Spitz unearths little new information, but he excels at rendering the Stones in stunning Technicolor. Spitz focuses on the narrative details and anecdotes that give the band’s story deep richness and emotion.

Take, for example, the Stones’ 1965 classic “Satisfaction,” the first song to reach number one on the U.S. charts. A popular story is that Richards woke up in the middle of the night, grabbed his guitar next to his bed, recorded the iconic riff and the phrase “I’m never satisfied” on a cassette recorder in his hotel room in Clearwater, Florida, and went back to sleep. However, as Spitz points out, the song initially went nowhere in the studio. That was until a few days later, when Stewart bought a fuzz box for Richards. This gave the song a meaner sound, a perfect match for Jagger’s lyrics about frustration and alienation. A classic was born.

Pierce the Stones Myth

Spitz’s in-depth reporting often punctures the myths surrounding the band. For example, contrary to the common belief of many fans, much of the blame for the rift with his bandmates and tragic death lies with Jones.

Jones, the most musically adventurous member of the group, played sitar on “Paint It Black” and dulcimer on “Lady Jane,” but was not a songwriter. That fueled his jealousy and insecurities, and frontman Jagger stole the spotlight from him. A monster of a man, Jones impregnated multiple teenage girls and physically and emotionally abused several women, including Pallenberg. Perhaps that’s why she left him with Richards. Over time, Jones’ contributions in the studio and on stage diminished, and he became a catatonic drug addict. The Stones fired Jones in June 1969, which would have been justified a few years earlier. He drowned in his home pool less than a month later.

Author Bob Spitz

(Elena Seibert)

Similarly, Stones lore has long romanticized that “Exile on Main Street” was made in the stuffy, dingy basement of Richards’ rented Villa Nercourt in the south of France. The Stones had camped there to avoid British taxes. In the story, Richards says that while in the throes of heroin addiction, he managed to come up with a series of indelible riffs centered around his signature open G tuning, which he learned from Ry Cooder, leading the band to create one of the greatest albums in rock history. According to Spitz, that’s not entirely accurate.

Yes, Richards came up with the licks for “Rocks Off,” “Happy,” and “Tumble Dice.” But it’s equally true that an anxious Richards missed countless recording sessions, invited dealers, cronies and other distractions to Nellcourt, and repeatedly failed to show up to write with Jagger. Rather than completing the album in the drug-like haze of a French basement, the band overdubbed for six months at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles, where Jagger provided much of the vocals.

Beatles vs. Stones

One of the most interesting themes that Spitz develops is the symbiotic relationship between the Beatles and the Stones, with the Fab Four almost overshadowing them, but not until they were overshadowed.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote and provided “I Wanna Be Your Man” to the Stones, and Jones performed it on slide guitar in 1963, making it the group’s first UK Top 20 hit. Lennon and McCartney’s songwriting partnership inspired Jagger and Richards to begin writing their own songs. In early 1964, the Beatles first came to the United States and made television history by appearing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and performing at Carnegie Hall. A few months later, the Stones began their first American tour at San Bernardino’s Swing Auditorium. In 1967, the Beatles released their psychedelic masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. The Stones responded with the psychedelic chaos “The Satanic Majesties Request.”

Rolling Stones: Biography Cover

As the Beatles began to split up, Spitz writes, the Stones narrowed their focus. The band released Beggar’s Banquet at the end of 1968 and Let It Bleed the following year, albums as innovative and visionary as The White Album and Abbey Road. For the first time, the two groups were on equal footing.

Even after the Beatles disbanded in 1970, the Stones continued to perform. Jones was replaced by virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor (whose smooth, melodic style served as a complement to Richards), and they produced what many consider their best work, “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main Street.” Even more impressively, the band, now joined by Taylor’s successor Ronnie Wood, continues to dazzle audiences with their incendiary live shows, touring in support of their late-career triumph ‘Hackney Diamonds’ in 2024. In contrast, the Beatles retired from active action in 1966 and devoted their energies to the studio.

Hundreds of books have been written about the Rolling Stones, but few shine like Spitz. It’s essential for anyone who loves or likes the Stones.

Like many of the band’s biographers, Spitz downplays the post-1972 “exile” period. He curtly dismisses 2005’s powerful A Bigger Bang and 2016’s back-to-basics blues covers album Blue and Lonesome as “a decent effort to show the band was living on borrowed time.” That criticism is both misplaced and poorly developed. Spitz ignores the band’s legendary live album Brussels Affair, recorded in 1973, and why the band waited decades before officially releasing it.

These are small nonsense. Spitz wrote a book that is aptly 704 pages long. It would have been even more powerful if it had spent about 50 more pages covering his later years. In the words of the Rolling Stones, “I know it’s just rock and roll, but I love it, I love it, yes I love it.”

Mark Barron, a former Times, Forbes, and Inc. Magazine reporter, teaches advanced writing classes at USC. He lives in Fullerton.