The 40-Year Odyssey of the Rolling Stones
By Stephen Davis
In early-'60s London a shaggy-maned singer changes his name from Mike Jagger to the tougher-sounding Mick, while a scrawny lad named Keith Richards turned on to Chuck Berry. A force of nature was born. Davis, known for his lurid 1985 Led Zeppelin biography Hammer of the Gods, leaves no Stone unburned in this tour through four decades of drugs, adultery and even suspicious death. The familiar details range from petty to disturbing: Former bassist Bill Wyman and Richards didn't speak for 11 years; Jagger once sent John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas on an errand, then locked the door while he had sex with Phillips's 18-year-old daughter, TV star Mackenzie; Frank Thorogood, an employee of Brian Jones's, allegedly confessed on his deathbed in 1993 to intentionally drowning the guitarist, whose 1969 death was thought to be an accident. Written in a hip, staccato style, Old Gods glories in the chaos of rock before it became festooned with corporate logos. The Stones didn't invent debauchery, but they mastered it. (Broadway, $27.50)
Bottom Line: Satisfaction guaranteed
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