Stones fans (and blues guitar players): You’re gonna love this book. What a surprise! It’s not perfect, but in parts is insightful, truthful, and informative. Way interesting background stuff on this phenomenal band.
I enjoyed it immensely. There was a fascinating part about Keith plying an acoustic guitar directly into a cassette recorder and distorting the sound to get the desired effect. They were getting electric guitar out of acoustic guitar in ways you can’t do with today’s digital recording apparatus. I remember listening to a Stones song back in the day as I was returning to reality from an, ahem, chemically-enhanced state of consciousness. What was this sound? It was as if they were distorting time, stretching it, and compressing it.
The book explains how the Keith and Mick couldn’t believe that Americans were so largely unaware of Mississippi/Texas.Chicago blues music, their tangled relationship, how they wrote songs together, Keith’s formidable heroin/cocaine habits… It’s startling in its honesty about a lot of stuff. (And it also led me indirectly to an epiphany about ebooks, which I’ll tackle in another post.)
I saw this at stupid Costco one day and thought what a great Christmas present it would make for my husband, and then promptly spaced it. Thanks for the reminder…his birthday's in June.