The Stone Age: Sixty Years of the Rolling Stones

Music journalist and biographer Jones (Who Killed John Lennon) chronicles in this tiresome survey the legacy of the Rolling Stones, who “still roam the world like rusty tanks without a war to go to.” As Jones looks back at the band’s history of backbiting, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, she dutifully rattles off details about the successes of the “songwriting and recording superstars”—three Grammy Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award—before delving into a less-than-flattering look at the band members’ selfishness, their callow treatment of women, and their formulaic performances. Though the late Charlie Watts, the band’s drummer, is given credit as “the dignified Stone, the antithesis of a rock star, and a joyous contradiction,” Jagger and his “infamous propensity for infidelity” are hashed out—Jones estimates the singer has had 4,000 lovers (in an appendix, Jones reckons that bassist Bill Wyman had canoodled with more than 1,000 women). Elsewhere, a conversation with David Ambrose, former head of A&R at EMI records, revisits the rumor that guitarist Mick Taylor left the band because he and Jagger were having sex, while the late Brian Jones is depicted by a “snarling” Keith Richards as a “ ‘cold-hearted and vicious dwarf’ who physically abused his girlfriends.” Though there’s plenty of exploits, most of them won’t come as revelations to the band’s devoted fans. This feels more shallow than substantive. (Aug.)