I heard this author promoting the book on "The Jim Bohanon" show last night(accidently just because this comes on right before C2C) and while commenting and taking call-in questions, I was amazed at how many inaccuracies and just old rumours that his answers consisted of. Most of what he said about Altamont came from reading Barger's book (he admits this) and a conversation with Sam Cutler. He claimed that "anyone who has listened to the Stones realize how their's is a keyboard driven sound! Charlie didn't join the band until 1964. Stu was forced out because Andrew said you cant have 6 guys in a band, you can barely get away with 5. (plus he didn't look right which I guess is sorta accurate) He said it was kinda sad because Stu was angry about it for the rest of his life. When Chuck Leavell joined the band(back to the keyboard theory) he elevated them to heights they had never been. They pumped it as the "definitive" book by a real insider.

scottkeef,are you sure he actually said chuck leavell "joined the band and elevated them to heights they'd never been?

i don't even know how to respond,it's like....it's like when you have an encounter in the street with someone and they seem a little off ,then you look down and notice that they're wearing two different shoes ..the light comes on-"oh,i get it you're insane"

in stones world this is like one of those moments- a person says something and a light comes on"oh i get it,you don't know what the fck you're talking about"

I just listened to the archived podcast - the callers were completely retarded, btw, and the host referred to Ronnie ¨Howard¨ and Charlie ¨Wells.¨

He was answering a caller’s question about Chuck Leavell, after more than an hour of talking, so his head was probably spinning a bit:

¨If anybody knows the Rolling Stones they know how important the keyboards and the piano have been from the beginning. Some of the most famous songs and moments are keyboards. This goes back to Ian Stewart ... They played with great, great keyboard players over the years. Ian Stewart and then later very famously Nicky Hopkins. And Chuck Leavell ... He’s elevated them in a way, although Nicky Hopkins was so great.¨

(Rich says in his book that Sonny Barger would speak to him, but only about Sonny’s book.)

Quote
DeanGoodman
I just listened to the archived podcast - the callers were completely retarded, btw, and the host referred to Ronnie ¨Howard¨ and Charlie ¨Wells.¨

He was answering a caller’s question about Chuck Leavell, after more than an hour of talking, so his head was probably spinning a bit:

¨If anybody knows the Rolling Stones they know how important the keyboards and the piano have been from the beginning. Some of the most famous songs and moments are keyboards. This goes back to Ian Stewart ... They played with great, great keyboard players over the years. Ian Stewart and then later very famously Nicky Hopkins. And Chuck Leavell ... He’s elevated them in a way, although Nicky Hopkins was so great.¨

(Rich says in his book that Sonny Barger would speak to him, but only about Sonny’s book.)

Brian Jones on mellotron/keyboard

well, it is entirely possible that my old sleepy ears may have paraphrased a bit in my memory but yeah,Dean I thought all of those involved with the show sounded a bit ignorant..

Your recall was fine; did not mean to contradict you.

Matt Clifford elevated the band to new heights!

Sounds like an interesting book. I also enjoy books from real insiders like Tony Sanches.

Rich Cohen's 'Machers and Rockers - Chess Records and the Business of Rock 'n Roll' is highly recommended.

Probably not the right section for this expression
but after watching 'Totally Stripped RS 1995'
Cohen this 1994-1995 extraordinary version you fell into,
maybe Jagger needed a separate ride for cryotherapy iced coffin treatments
while getting God's DNA injected nightly?
Ha ha over the top,
perhaps he simply couldn't be around temptation of drugs and alcohol
in order to keep his PERFECT physique or studio record voice aged 25 years and STILL SOUNDS LIKE THE RECORD. Did I mention his exercised to death body yet? Uh-huh. And the dance moves? Christ.
I see the dynamic: perfectionism, on detail concentration verses the gait of the coolest, in the moment, carefree dude in the world. Yin and yang.
Spectacular.
The friction was part of what made it work in this time period.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-06-05 18:34 by 35love.

Hi all,

Any Comments on Rich Cohens book before i pay $13.99 US for the ebook to have on my mac and thru iTunes...

I ask as I have read so many wrong things that readers qouted from the book so if anyone read it and would care to share their opinion I would appreciate it as there have been many over the years who cashed in via books which I read only to find outright BS or stuff from other books. Thank you.

Five pages worth here: [www.iorr.org]


"As we say in England, it can get a bit trainspottery"

thank you

Quote
chevysales
Hi all,

Any Comments on Rich Cohens book before i pay $13.99 US for the ebook to have on my mac and thru iTunes...

I ask as I have read so many wrong things that readers qouted from the book so if anyone read it and would care to share their opinion I would appreciate it as there have been many over the years who cashed in via books which I read only to find outright BS or stuff from other books. Thank you.

It's a mix of other books - your email is hidden, mine isnt

I read this book a couple of weeks ago.

I was somewhat surprised that he would be such a @#$%& after having accepted
several lucrative film-TV offers to work with Jagger through the years.

My feeling is that the only way he could get much of a book deal was to dish the dirt because that's what the majority of publishers who bring out rock books want.

Cohen is no Peter Guralnick, a truly brilliant writer. Cohen has some talent but apparently not much integrity.

I'm about 2/3 the way through The Sun The Moon...and, It's OK. Certainly an entertaining enough book. I am surprised though that so much of the book is re-telling the history of the band, that's been told 1,000x already. There have been (so far) only a couple small chapters that discuss Cohen's personal interactions with the band - and that, to me, is the selling point and unique viewpoint the book might bring - but much of the book is just the same old story of the band and its roots from rags to riches, that's been told before, and better.
It's also amusing the way he tries to put himself in the picture of things that happened before he was even born (his description of what LSD did to them all on the night of the famed bust is especially amusing.)
I borrowed it from the Library. Kind of glad I didn't spend the $ on it.

Quote
swiss
As Dean Goodman says, the Amazon reviews are "bullish."

(when I first read Dean's comment I thought it said the reviews on Amazon are "bullshit" -- was was about to ask what he meant, since most are quite positive!

Anyway, I look forward to reading the book...new perspectives, new material, new insights. Why not? It'll be fun summer reading. Plus, I'm a big fan of Vinyl!

- swiss

Me too, swiss. Cohen had written about the book in Vanity Fair a couple of months ago; he didn't sound like a complete ass and I thought he might have a fresh take or at least provide a new flavor flavor to the Stones stuff we've read.

And thanks to whoever inserted the link to Andrew OL's article --I'll be adding 2Stoned to my summer reading list too.

"Below, read an excerpt from chapter six the book."

A few months ago, I went for a walk in Soho, London. I wanted to look into some of the places where the Stones got started. I stopped by the building that once housed Regent Sound, where the band cut its first sides, a slapdash establishment that once teemed with life. I stood before the Marquee Club and the Roundhouse, then wandered through London’s Tin Pan Alley, where, in the fifties and sixties, the coffee bars were jammed with songsmiths. In an alley off Denmark Street, I studied a bulletin board plastered with wanted ads and audition notices. A few caught my eye, especially this one:

BASSIST AND GUITARIST
Looking for Singer and
Drummer to Start a
Stoner Rock/Grunge Band
We’re two young guys (20–22) looking for a rough filthy pissed off singer/songwriter with
a negative approach to life and a drummer with a powerful approach to the drums that hits hard as a beast, between 19 & 23 years old, to start a full-time kickass project.
Our influences are bands like Kyuss, Nirvana, QOTSA, early Incubus, Snakepit, Korn, Snot and RATM and RHCP as well
NO @#$%&, No excessively religious, NO moralists Dirty hair required

It hit me, this notice, because yes and wow, but also because it expressed a truth about the Einsteinian nature of rock ’n’ roll. Simply put, there is no time. Rock ’n’ roll is quantum. The beginning is tangled up with the end, the exits are entrances, every moment is present in every other moment and it’s always now. How else can you explain the Rolling Stones filling stadiums decades after all the important stuff happened? Or the records released by long-dead stars? There is no progress—it never really got better than Elvis in 1956. Every band has to rediscover what’s already been discovered and forgotten. It’s a cycle: Elvis to Sedaka; Stones to Bee Gees; innocence to decadence.

Which accounts for the similarity between the notice above and the notice Brian Jones put in Jazz News in 1962, his call for musicians to form a rhythm-and-blues band. He’d already recruited Geoff Bradford to play guitar and Brian Knight to play harmonica. Brian asked Paul Jones to sing, but Paul Jones said no, which, over time, turned him into the man who could have been Jagger. “I had two reasons for saying no,” he told me, “the main reason being that I thought it ridiculously optimistic to think we could make a living playing blues. The other is that I had a good job with a dance band, singing the hits of the day. It was a mistake, but life is nothing but a series of mistakes. At least mine have been colorful.”

Auditions were held in the Bricklayers Arms, a pub off Wardour Street. Arriving early, Keith stood in the doorway watching a young man play boogie-woogie piano. This was Ian Stewart, a Scottish truck driver who rattled the keys like Professor Longhair on a swampy Delta night. He was barrel-chested and lantern-jawed, with big arms and bulging eyes. His lips were twisted, a lock of hair swung across his face. He looked less like a bluesman than a stevedore. From 1963 till his death in 1985, Ian Stewart—Stu!—was a crucial part of the band, the so-called sixth Stone, yet, for reasons that will become clear, he remains largely unknown. A shadowy figure, a forgotten man.

Keith entered the room quietly, strapped on his guitar, began to play. Stu looked up, smiling. Jagger turned up a short time later.“Jones said he didn’t think Jagger was a particularly good singer but had something,” Norman Jopling, a journalist who covered the scene for New Musical Express, told me. “And he did. Jagger could always front.”

Brian asked Mick to join the group. Mick said he’d come in only if Keith was included. The other members didn’t want Keith because Keith was a devotee of Chuck Berry, whom aficionados dismissed as pop, near beer. There was an argument. Geoff Bradford and Brian Knight stormed out, exiting history. As the band was now under-staffed, Mick asked if he could also bring in Dick Taylor. “ When I met Brian, he asked, ‘Can you play bass?’” Taylor told me. “I told him maybe, but I didn’t have a bass. He said, ‘Fix that.’ So I went out and bought a bass guitar, then learned by doing it.”

The musicians rehearsed all summer. Brian ran these sessions, setting the schedule, choosing the songs. It was his project, a second family to ease his loneliness. In the early days, the Stones were driven less by Mick’s ambition or Keith’s love than by Brian’s need. His life was a sickness that he believed could be cured by the blues.

[chicagotonight.wttw.com]
_____________________________________________________
I haven't read the book, and truth is I'm not likely to, but I saw this excerpt today and have enjoyed this thread so I wanted to share it here. The same day "Vinyl" is cancelled coincidentally.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-06-23 03:12 by hopkins.

Finally caved and bought this book. Will report back with my thoughts

If the story that Mick joined only if Keith joined is true, that would be new to me.
I have assumed that the Mick-Keith bond was formed in their songwriting/leadership partnership, but perhaps they were rock solid tight from the minute they bumped into each other on the train.
How long were they actually hanging out from that time until this audition?

Finally finished it, my thoughts? Read all the books since 1972, how does this compare?
It's an average read to me. I won't read it again.

Just finished it. Nothing new. I won't read it again. Bill Germans book is the best if u wanna learn about the stones since the eighties.

Rich Cohen on Charlie Rose about the book.

[charlierose.com]

Quote
mnewman505
Rich Cohen on Charlie Rose about the book.

[charlierose.com]

*Thanks for that, I watched the whole thing (big laugh at very end)
I've never seen Cohen in a video, just read the book,
but he and I are same age/ grew up same sort area USA,
and I can relate.
Cheers.

I had previously heard of this book, and yesterday I happened upon it at the library by my house. Anyone know if it's worth a read? I've just read to many books on the band already and figured I wouldn't bother if it didn't at least have a new thing or two to offer. (note: I haven't really read any books that cover the post-Wyman era, so if there's some stuff there about that I'd be interested).

Haven't read it, but here are some reviews (Taken from Amazon):

Editorial Reviews:

“Fabulous . . . [Rich] Cohen interweaves his firsthand accounts of the men in the band with the well-trodden history of the Stones, from inception around 1963 through the golden period of 1968 to 1973 and then hopscotching through time to bring us up to when he met the band. The research is meticulous. . . . Cohen’s own interviews even yield some new Stones lore.”—The Wall Street Journal

“[Cohen] can catch the way a record can seem to remake the world [and] how songs make a world you can’t escape.”—Greil Marcus, Pitchfork

“No one can tell this story, wringing new life even from the leathery faces of mummies like the Rolling Stones, like Rich Cohen. . . . Cohen writes about survivors. Men who will not allow life to grind them down. . . . The book beautifully details the very meaning of rock ’n’ roll—the timeless swagger and the way the imperfections of the Stones—their meter, their faces, even Mick’s accidentally bitten tongue—embody the dangerousness of kid-oriented popular music.”—New York Observer

“Masterful . . . Hundreds of books have been written about this particular band and [Cohen’s] will rank among the very best of the bunch.”—Chicago Tribune

“Cohen, who has shown time and time again he can take any history lesson and make it personal and interesting . . . somehow tells the [Stones’] story in a whole different way. This might be the best music book of 2016.”—Men’s Journal

“[Cohen’s] account of the band’s rise from ‘footloose’ kids to ‘old, clean, prosperous’ stars is, like the Stones, irresistible.”—People

Sounds good Dandelion, I will have to be checking it out. Thanks!

A review with quotes from the Book - unfortunately only in German and w/o copyable text (maybe a Online-OCR + Google Translate helps):

"Showbiz-version of the Devil - A successful retelling of the Rolling-Stones-story, partly overlaid by subjective views"


Stereo Magazine 3/2017, p. 124

I have bought it and read it. I know a lot of people liked it, but I'm not one of them.

If I buy a book about the Rolling Stones I wanna read only about them and not about the writer's own life and how he got to know the Stones and their music.
What he writes about the Stones is the same old stuff, what you have read already a 1001 times before.
Also the actual text (in huge lettering) is about 2/3 of the book, the rest is notes, bibliography and other not interesting stuff.

I consider it as a bad purchase.



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2018-06-12 23:21 by GJV.