Sean Egan - The Mammoth Book of the Rolling Stones

Londoner Sean Egan has contributed to, among others, Billboard, Book Collector, Classic Rock, Record Collector, Tennis World, Total Film, Uncut and RollingStone.com . He has written or edited nineteen books, including works on The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones, Coronation Street, Manchester United and Tarzan. His critically acclaimed novel Sick of Being Me was published in 2003, while Dont Mess with the Best, his 2008 collection of short stories, carried cover endorsements from Booker Prize winners Stanley Middleton and David Storey.

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Sean Egan

Constable & Robinson Ltd

5556 Russell Square

London WC1B 4HP

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2013

Copyright Sean Egan, 2013

The right of Sean Egan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

Data is available from the British Library

UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-646-6 (paperback)

UK ISBN: 978-1-78033-647-3 (ebook)

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First published in the United States in 2013 by Running Press Book Publishers, A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions

Books published by Running Press are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

US ISBN: 978-0-7624-4814-2

US Library of Congress Control Number: 2012942537

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Digit on the right indicates the number of this printing

Running Press Book Publishers

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Philadelphia, PA 19103-4371

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Printed and bound in the UK

Cover photograph: Michael Putland; Cover design: www.simonlevyassociates.co.uk

Its hard to remember just what that period was like, Mick Jagger said of the sixties in 1987, but I can assure you it was extremely different from now. Things you take for granted now they wouldnt then: social values, the way people mix, racial segregation, sexual segregation and orientation, the opportunities people would or wouldnt have, class and money.

What Jagger was uncharacteristically too modest to say was that so many of those injustices were rectified partly because of the group of which he has now been the lead singer for half a century. The Rolling Stones were unlike any rock or pop ensemble before them in their refusal to wear a suit uniform, their unruly mops of hair and their shrugged dismissal in both interviews and recordings of social conformity and tradition. Whereas The Beatles, at first anyway, were smiling and solicitous, the Stones casualness and surliness seemed to represent a new social order: an antidote to a censorious, authoritarian and grey society, whether it be class-bound Britain, white-picket-fence America or communist-yoke Russia. As the years passed, the young increasingly emulated and took their cue from the Stones outlaw attitude. So seriously did the Establishment take their enemies-of-society mien that in 1967 Jagger and Stones guitarist Keith Richards were given harshly discriminatory prison sentences for drugs offences, while fellow guitarist Brian Jones was hounded by the police via repeated raids in suspicious circumstances. Nothing the Establishment did, however, would stop the Stones influence seeping into the DNA of the generation about to assume power.

Meanwhile, the band effortlessly made classic records, moving with awe-inspiring speed from being the best rhythm-and-blues covers merchants on the scene to creating their own sound via the Jagger/Richards songwriting axis that swiftly rivalled Lennon/McCartney. They defiantly littered the buttoned-up sixties with brilliant 45 rpm anthems of disaffection and sensuality like (I Cant Get No) Satisfaction and Lets Spend the Night Together, while turning out classic albums like Aftermath, Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed. Come the seventies, the disintegration of The Beatles and their own appointment of virtuoso guitarist Mick Taylor saw the Stones acquire a new swaggering, if wasted, confidence. They became the undisputed template for a rock band via their manes of rebelliously long hair, their gargantuan and decadent tours, and masterpiece LPs like Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St.

Although marriage, family and sated artistic hunger plus the emergence of younger, more relevant acts inevitably meant a dilution of their impact and powers, the Stones were still able to knock out the odd superb record like 1978s Some Girls, while their enduringly profitable tours proved what nobody had suspected back when they started: that a rock band could remain active and sustain appeal across generations.

The Mammoth Book of The Rolling Stones presents a bumper collection of writing, old and new, on the group correctly described at various times as both The greatest rock n roll band in the world and A way of life.

Sean Egan

John Pidgeon

First published on www.rocksbackpages.com , April 2009

The first time I hear Cyril Davies blow his harmonica is January 1963 at Leos Jazz Club in Windsor. As I approach, shoulders hunched against the cold, I watch billows of cigarette smoke, lit pink and yellow by the lights inside, spill from an open door, before the thin, chill evening air is split by an inhuman scream, a siren wail that rises a tone, then subsides. The sound nails me momentarily to the pavement, then propels me to the entrance of an unprepossessing British Legion Hall, which by day is a hang-out for pensioners who have served time, as most have, in the armed forces. At a folding table by the door I fumble distractedly in my pocket for the four shilling (20p) entry fee, entirely absorbed by the source of this extraordinary sound: a balding, badly dressed man, who looks middle-aged to my teenage eyes.