The True Adventures Of The Rolling Stones (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
On Stanley Booth: Rolling with the Stones on Waves of the Times This is less a formal review of Stanley Booth’s now-classic book, The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones, than it is a statement of appreciation for the same. In fact, I can state at this time that my biggest criticism of the title, or at least of the edition I own, is that it lacks an index. Having become the modern essential reference text on the Rolling Stones that it is, a reader can only hope that someone plans to publish an edition that contains one. But for the time being I’ll say this––If you could arrange a chat over a cup of coffee or tea with a literary journalist from any given period –such as Ralph Ellison, Truman Capote, Joan Didion, or Tom Wolfe––about how they accomplished what they have as literary journalists, one thing might soon become clear: a huge part of getting the job done was allowing whatever situation they were covering to swallow them whole. As in mind, body, soul, and the bits and pieces of dreams and nightmares that held their lives together. Apply that concept to the reality of Stanley Booth making his way through the giant waves of counterculture rebellion that swept over the 1960s and a profound mosaic of imagery emerges.For one, there is the ambitious writer with a distinct literary sensibility born and bred in Waycross, Georgia (where the late great Ossie Davis attended high school) lobbying in England, California, and elsewhere for a contract to write the book now known as The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones with their “full and exclusive cooperation.” There is the artist determined to maintain focus on his work ––taking detailed notes on everything from the style of Keith Richards’ jacket and the impact of Mick Jagger’s toothache on a rehearsal to the polish on B.B. King’s custom-made Gibson guitar and the nearly overwhelming heat generated by Tina Turner’s on-stage sensuality. Beyond simply noting such observances is an enviable talent for transforming them into transcendent poetry, as with this snapshot of Mick Jagger at the L.A. Forum in 1969 just before he goes onstage: “In the backstage doorway Jagger was standing, dressed in black trousers with silver buttons down the legs, black scoop-neck jersey with white Leo glyph on chest, wide metal-studded black belt, long red flowing scarf, on his head an Uncle Sam hat, his eyes wide and dark, looking like a bullfighter standing in the sun just inside the door of the arena, seeing nothing but the path he walks, toreros and banderilleros beside and behind him, to his fate.”Along the same lines, Booth writes like something of a natural seer when interpreting certain moments that might be described as the philosophical nuances of the psychedelic times: “It is possible that to know the essence of this moment you would have to be part of the most Damoclean time yet seen on earth… to have come to this music in the innocence of youth because of its humanity… to follow it steadfastly through all manner of troubles, and to have found yourself in a huge dark saucer-mushroom, doing it again, playing for survival, for your life. You had to be there.”That he was there and allowed the powerful uproar of the 1960s, as set to the music of the Rolling Stones, to swallow him whole in order to deliver an enduring first-hand account of it, is a major part of what makes Booth’s work the titanic achievement that it is. The 1960s laid the groundwork for the end of one era and the beginning of another. By the time Booth hit the road to tag along with the Stones on tour during the latter part of the decade, scenes like those of the recent beatings and pepper-sprayings experienced by Occupy Wall Street protesters were fairly common in the U.S. and elsewhere. So was a seemingly ceaseless flow of marijuana, cocaine, LSD, and other drugs that everyone knew were illegal but which many consumed to sedate themselves from the brutalities of the times (NOTE: Please DO NOT interpret that last statement as an endorsement for the use of hard drugs). With a string of well-known assassinations, racial tension that boiled over into actual physical clashes, war, and a serious push to reestablish the tenets of sexual expressiveness, the world vibrated from one day to the next between frequencies of barely-contained anarchy and imploding chaos. To place oneself in the burning thick of it all, open-eyed and armed only with a pen, a pad, a Georgia boy’s swamp-grown bravado, and hopes for future literary vindication as Booth did, is every bit as admirable as so many have already said. To have accomplished what he set out to, at a cost much greater than most would ever consider paying in 2012, is the kind of marvel described sometimes as a miracle. by Aberjhani5 January, 2012
In the mid-'60s Stanley Booth wrote apparently on spec a sensitively descriptive, narrative piece on Furry Lewis, the one-legged Memphis bluesman, a piece that was not published until Playboy brought it out in 1970 -- but it seems by then to have been enough to secure Booth an agent, a 1968 assignment to go to London and cover the Rolling Stones, and ultimately, a book-contract to tour with the Stones in the aftermath of the death of their bandmate, Brian Jones, and the free July 5, 1969 Hyde Park concert at which they memorialized him. Booth's book is an account of traveling with the Stones in America from August 1969 to the December 6, 1969 date on which they offered a free concert at Altamont with the Flying Burrito Brothers, The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane & CSNY -- a concert at which four people died, plus one, Meredith Hunter, murdered, apparently for dancing with his white girlfriend in the presence of the Hells Angels. Booth continued to travel with the Stones for several years after this, but this book (not published until 1984, under the dumb-bunny title Dance With the Devil), while one half its chapters narrate in oral history the formation of the band, its growing popularity, and its legal troubles and alienation from Jones, in its other half offers a "history's first draft" of that American fall with the Stones, a crucial one both for the country (it was The Days of Rage) and for the band itself. The book has many flaws, too many to recount here. Its brilliance will not be gainsaid. It provides a documentary account by one flawed eye-witness to the Stones' scene, as that scene is besieged by sharks, hangers-on, groupies, "birds", pimps, mezzes, frauds, pulp heads, and fans, among whom, the author must of course sort himself out. A moment of unprecedented access to the Stones, and to the basic generosity that worked itself out in the collaboration of Mick Jagger and Keith Richard. The moment was beyond ripe, and Stanley Booth made himself a very productive little fruit fly. I resist the metonymy by which destination Altamont is made to substitute for something idealistic in the counter-culture; nonetheless, as agents of that particular form of what Robert Christgau calls "mass bohemianism," the Rolling Stones will not be resisted, indeed, listening to them, one may still reflect on what is most exigent in that form they so beautifully exemplified.
What do You think about The True Adventures Of The Rolling Stones (2000)?
I did thoroughly enjoy listening to this book. It says that it originally came out in 1984. I don't recall hearing anything about it then. I had already seen the Altamont movie by that time. Basically this is life on the road with the Rolling Stones in the late '60s. They were always deemed rougher than the Beatles, although some of them do seem to come from better families. I've always found it hard to believe that Jagger went to London School of Economics.My problem with this book is the way it jumped backwards and forwards in time. The time frame may be clearer in the physical book. But when all you have to go by is the narrator it can be confusing. I was never quite sure what to believe about Brian Jones. But it is "sex, drugs and rock 'n roll".
—Jan C
Vaguely commissioned to write a book about the Stones, Stanley Booth joined them on their late 1969 US tour, which culminated in the infamous free Altamont Speedway concert. The resulting work alternates chapter-by-chapter between two timelines, one a very good history of the Stones' rise to fame in the 60s, the other the more detailed and first-hand '69 tour diary.With the benefit of hindsight, Booth is aware of all of that (perhaps overstated) Altamont 'end of an era' baggage, and smartly uses the event as a structural device to build dread into his version of events. He opens the book with a flash-forward - Mick and Keith arrive by night and poke around the place, looking at the desert hippies glugging their jugs of wine, taking in the strange vibe before it all escalates horribly and tragically some hours later. With this rather novelistic trick, he establishes that True Adventures will be unlike most rock writing. It has a fluid, almost novelistic prose style, and when he gets descriptive, Booth's eye (and memory) for detail amongst the haze and chaos of the tour is actually quite incredible. As Greil Marcus points out in the foreword, Booth has largely succeeded in his ambition to channel Raymond Chandler in every sentence. An oddly effective literary role model for a rock bio.I'd agree that this should appeal even to those who aren't fans of the Stones, but for those who are, it's peppered with priceless insight. For example, the passage about the undercover recording session at Muscle Shoals that begat 'Brown Sugar', 'Wild Horses' and 'You Gotta Move' is thrilling. I've read elsewhere about the Stones sounding hopelessly terrible ("Just awful, like anti-music," in the words of Mick Taylor, their lead guitarist at the time) until their jam somehow stumbles into an epiphany, and I always find accounts of this quite amusing. There's also some good stuff on Gram Parsons of The Flying Burrito Brothers, who crosses paths with the band several times and was a pal.
—Simon Reid
Brilliantly constructed, explosive, masterful imagery...the best book on rock and roll I have ever read, and I have read far too many books on rock and roll. Covering the Stones at their peak, the chapters alternate and tell two stories in one: the odd chapters build up to Altamont, and the even chapters build up to the death of Brian Jones. The book didn't come out until 1984, and by that point, the culture had so irrevocably changed (and the rebellious relevance of the Rolling Stones)that this book was never given the accolades it deserves. Admiring but never fawning, "The True Adventures..." is the documentary "Cocksucker Blues" with Nabokovian sensuality, and a real taste of how truly dangerous yet driven the Rolling Stones were with their music and their lives. Its literary ambitions put this miles beyond the usual Creemy post-beat raving you've come to expect from the genre. I can't recommend this book enough...even if you don't like the Rolling Stones, it's still a completely engaging story.
—Brian
