Thursday, September 21, 2017

The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones by Rich Cohen (Book Review)



The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones
By Rich Cohen
Published by Spiegel & Grau, 2016
Price: $18 

The Sun & the Moon & the Rolling Stones is a relatively brief microcosmic biography of the band focusing mostly on the years from its formation to their artistic peak with Exile on Main Street. The years after that are portrayed thru its effects on the life of the author who was assigned to cover them on their 1994 tour for the hack auteur Rolling Stone Magazine. These bits can be a bit intrusive because if you're like me, you don't really care about the impressions or life of a "journalist" that wrote for that shit magazine that is now the size of a manila folder. But overall, even those sections of the book are entertaining if not very enlightening.

To me, the book went into about the right depth for a semi-fan like me. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE a lot of Stones songs and own a lot of their albums, but I think it's a shame that they outlived their prime. So I'm a fan of their best work. I think they were the closest rivals to the Beatles but fell a little short.

By the time I was getting into music seriously it was about the time this book starts. I actually saw the Stones on that 94 tour at the Astrodome in Houston. The same year I saw Nine Inch Nails in their prime 3 times. The Stones were old even back then and I don't really remember it blowing me away. I just remember a tiny little band on a monstrous stage they were too big to fill.

I haven't delved that much into the biography of the band so the info in this book was informative but I doubt a real hardcore Stones fan would find anything of value in it. It's cursory with its subject. The author gets too involved and subjective, especially with his erotic hero worship of Keith Richards. He puts so much praise on the guy for his survival skills and toughness that I felt he should just call up Keith and ask if he would like to have sex with him. It was that over the top.

 Another very subjective call that Cohen makes time and time again is his belief that the Rolling Stones were more important and wrote better songs than the Beatles. I thought that was a joke. The Beatles would have existed with or without the Stones. The Stones would not have existed without the Beatles. The Stones would have never started the British Invasion. They were always following in the footsteps of the Beatles until the debacle of  Her Satanic Majesties Request. I always got the sense that the Stones knew they were inferior to the Beatles. Cohen lambasts such classics as "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and writes that they sound dated now. I guarantee you children nowadays know the Beatles or someone like Elvis. If you said "Rolling Stones" they wouldn't have a clue.

The book was entertaining and kept me reading but someone that has read a lot of books about the Rolling Stones should give it a pass. It's more like a biography written by a fan boy.

My Grade: B

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