Product Description

The Rolling Stones, commonly referred to as the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band, epitomize everything that's excessive, lavish, exciting, and powerful about rock music. Here, founding member and bass player Bill Wyman presents an honest and humorous account that serves as a backstage pass to the band's history, from drug busts, to tax exile, to solo careers. Straight from Wyman's huge personal archive, "Rolling with the Stones" features previously unreleased letters, photographs, memorabilia, and personal journals. With over 2000 photographs, more than 45 beautifully designed tour spreads, song lists from every show, and biographies on each band member.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75820 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-21
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 512 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Assembled by former bassist Bill Wyman from his personal archive Rolling with the Stones is the lavishly illustrated story of rock legends The Rolling Stones. Wyman, born William Perks in 1936, was the oldest Stone and, as he candidly admits, probably only got into the group because he had his own bass and amplifier. (The electric bass was itself an instrument he'd only taken up after witnessing The Barron Knights in concert.)

He's written about his experience in the Stones before, his autobiography Stone Alone appeared in 1990 just a few months after he'd left the group. And while he furnishes little new here, it's the sheer wealth of his ephemeral material--reminiscences from group members and associates, rare photographs, set lists, album covers, tour posters, memorabilia etc--that make this book so impressive. It's very obviously a Dorling Kindersley creation and suffers, occasionally, from this reference publishers "visual information for visual information's sake" approach to design--a map of Britain illustrating the Stones' birthplaces is studded with little fire icons to show areas "subjected to extensive wartime bombing". Luckily, such clutter doesn't distract from the fact that this is still Wyman's chronicle of rock's Satanic Majesties; and as such, it's a "with pictures" tale of sex, drugs, arrests, deaths, solo projects (including Wyman's own postmodern pop classic Je Suis un Rock Star), legal wrangles and rock & roll. --Travis Elborough

Customer Reviews

No Stone Unturned
If you're only looking for a history of the Stones, there are more affordable books to choose from. But I doubt there are any more thorough. Thanks to Bill's legendary diaries Rolling With The Stones offers a staggering amount of information from interesting trivia to detailed describtions of the most important moments of the bands career. A multitude of outside information has also been used, but despite of the massive amount of data the book is very readable. Every page is well thought out, the layout is beautiful, as well as the graphics.
Each tour and record release is invidually presented, but for a trivia nut and a record collector I would recommend Nico Zentgraphs The Complete Rolling Stones Recordings instead.
But as an overall Stones book this tome is unbeatable, and might well be definitive.

A visual treat
This large-format hardback book would seem to be the Stones' answer (perhaps at the moment!) to the Beatles' "Anthology" book of a few years back. Assembled by Stones ex-bassist Bill Wyman from his personal archive, this is a sumptuous collection. Featured are many rare and hitherto unseen photos and tour memorabilia, and a lot of the text is from Bill's own diaries. If you are a fan of the classic Stones era from the 60s and 70s, then look no further for a fascinating read. This is also a great book to dip into. One suspects that a lot of the "sex and drugs" and scandal has been deliberately left out, but the "rock and roll" is most definitely here!
One small drawback is that the book is thin on recording details, but for that you should be looking at the "Complete Stones Recording Sessions" book as a companion piece.
I don't give many books five stars, but this one definitely deserves it.

A pictorial delight
This is a big, heavy book, with 512 big, colourful pages, all brimming with authentic history.

Almost (but not quite) everything one might want to know about the first thirty years of the Rolling Stones story is in here, carefully assembled from the memories, diaries and photos of Bill Wyman and his friends and colleagues. Richard Havers has added significant extra commentary in relevant places to help fill the inevitable gaps.

The Dorling Kindersley team have been their usual professional selves in making a very pretty coffee-table book. It must have taken them months of hard work to lick it all into such good shape. However, personally, I would have preferred a better differentiation between the copious text and the thousands of superb pictures - to see better the details of each - because the episodic presentation makes it more awkward to read. On the other hand if one just wants to dip into it, here and there, then gathering together all the pics and words about a particular facet on just a couple of pages works quite well.

It touches on many of the same events referred to in the 'According to The Rolling Stones' Autobiography, but often from a quite different point of view, and with different pictures and quotes. Wyman also offers many additional details on topics not mentioned in the others' book. Fascinating! I can see why they split.

I think one needs to have read both books to appreciate both sides of the Rolling Stones story, and then one might have a deeper understanding than would be possible from reading just this.

It really is a big, heavy book to wade through from cover to cover, but many fans might want to do just that, and it is quite difficult to put down on a first read.