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10 January 2007
Precursor to a Genre?
4 of 4 found this helpful This volume may not be the original Stones coffee table tome, but it is certainly close. I bought my previous copy when it was first published, at a time when I was a burgeoning Stones fanatic of 12 or 13, and it seemed to be the most exciting and reliable thing in print on the band. A scrapbook anthology of mostly previously published writing, it is, like Dalton's later collection THE ROLLING STONES; THE FIRST TWENTY YEARS, a quite useful and often amusing look at how the Stones were perceived in 1972. That is, it captures them at a somewhat crucial moment-- after "Sticky Fingers" and Altamont, but before "Exile on Main Street" and the epochal '72 tour. Much of the burden of mythology is already in place, but it's fascinating to read accounts and critical assessments of the band so very close to the roots of their legend. This is a terrific archival source today. For myself, having lost my original copy decades ago in one move or another, this was a classic E-bay reunion-- a chance to revisit pictures and prose that had, perhaps, rather too much effect on my formative years. Here I am, back on the virtual tour bus. Who would ever have guessed these guys would still be making us feel young thirty-odd years later? And, for a special value and bonus-- if you are a hopelessly untalented musician like me, but still have the desire to try and pick a guitar now and then-- this book contains fakebook-style chord and lyric charts of every formally released Jagger/Richards composition through "Sticky Fingers." The arrangements of "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and "Wild Horses" that I still pluck on occasion came from these pages, and it's an extra value-- an actual usefulness-- that kind of elevates this collection past most of the similar works that follow it.