LITMIR.BIZ

       FOREWORD

      I began researching The Stones in 1981, just after publication of my Beatles biography, Shout! I’d never been a particular admirer of the Rolling Stones, quite the opposite in fact, but chronicling the Beatles had shown me how closely the two bands’ histories were intertwined; so, having ‘done’ the Liverpudlians it seemed logical to move on to the Londoners.

      As a journalist I’d interviewed the Stones only once, in 1965 when I was on a small evening paper in north-east England and they appeared at the ABC cinema in Stockton-on-Tees. It was the zenith of their British notoriety, just post-‘Satisfaction’; I expected surly Neanderthals but, even to a provincial nobody like me, they were perfectly nice. I talked to Mick Jagger sitting on a cold backstage staircase (he wore a white fisherman’s-knit sweater and swigged from a Pepsi-Cola bottle; such different days!), then to all five in their dressing-room.

      Brian Jones was the friendliest, telling me in his quiet, educated voice about the constant hassles they faced between gigs in hotels and restaurants, not for any real bad behaviour – that didn’t come until later – but ‘just because we’re us’. When I requested an autograph for my sister, they all obliged, then former graphic designer Charlie Watts drew a decorative border around their signatures, adding ‘the Rolling Stones’ in case there should be any confusion.

      In later years, as a roving correspondent for the Sunday Times Magazine, I’d written about rock, soul and blues legends from Johnny Cash, Bill Haley, the Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys and Fleetwood Mac to James Brown, Little Richard, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Wilson Pickett, B. B. King and Sleepy John Estes – but never a word about the Stones. There seemed far too many experts on the subject

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