Massive Disappointment
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I was excited to discover this, as like several others, I thought his previous Stones book was fantastic. But in the intervening years the author has become insufferably pompous, egotistical and cliché-ridden. He also appears to have fired his editor.
The author's habit of continually inserting song titles/lyrics and even bits of Shakespeare (without quotation marks,just to prove how effortless it all is) is as annoying as listening to some teenager say "like" every other word. For example: "Clowns to the left of him, jokers to the right, there he is, stuck in the middle with Keith", and as for the last line in the book, it deserves throwing against a wall. The constant uses of "Philip Michael Jagger" and also of the present tense are both increasingly irritating to the point of distraction. And the bit where he breaks off to slag off other Stones book authors is hilariously crass and at the same time pahetic.
Please allow me to quote a paragraph as a perfect illustration of the author's style; if you can get to the end of it without choking, this book is for you!
"Before any of this happens, Keith and Anita pull a Houdini. No pun intended, they take a powder. Like Bonnie & Clyde, they go on the lam. They skedaddle. They do the cow-cow boogie out the big front door of Nellcote...and then head as fast as they can for the airport in Nice where they board a plane and fly to safety. Like Elvis, Keith and Anita have now left the building. They have flown the coop."
Hey, Greenfield, you forgot "They are ex-residents, they have ceased to be..."
(By the way, there is little or no discussion of the actual music, if that's what you're after. There are a couple of moments where the author suggests that sort of thing is beneath a writer of his stature.)
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take care - it's maybe not what you think
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This is a book I should have flipped through more carefully in the shop before buying. A cursory look makes you think it's going to be an in-depth look at the making of the album, but in fact Greenfield spends pages and pages minutely detailing events which can only be considered peripheral. Anita Pallinburg and Keith Richards' various attempts to get off heroin, the story of Anita's pregnancy, pointless conjectures about the baby being Mick's (which the author himself finally dismisses, leaving you wondering why on earth he bothered to mention it in the first place) and pages on end about the various frankly uninteresting hangers on at Nellcote.
There is no real attempt at historical contextualisation - no attempt in fact to tell the reader WHY the author feels any of the above is in some way significant. Such potentially fascinating explorations of the musical and personal forces at work during the making of the album (for example the presence of Gram Parsons, the frustrations of Mick Taylor) are given a cursory look at best. You get the distinct impression that Greenfield feels that such topics are beneath him, the province of mere "rock critics" as he is says, rather than "rock writers" such as himself. It looks as if he can't wait to get off all that boring music stuff and "get back to the party" - relying on the hazy, stoned or just downright unreliable memories of the drug-snorting non-entities who somehow gained access to the Stones' social circle in 1971.
On top of all that, the style is pretentious, with many facile asides and self-important pieces of rhetoric.
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Such A letdown
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One of the least satisfying reads I've ever encountered. Considering how utterly fantastic A Journey Across..... is makes it all the more galling. A terrible book with hardly any insight into the dark goings on in Nellcote as most of the interviewees were too stoned to remember things that happened 30-odd years ago. Most of the rest of it is padded out with attacks on other Stones books and an unnecessary catch up at the end. For this to come from Robert Greenfield of all people is astonishing. Forgot this half baked nonsense of a book and instead read his account of the Stones '72 American tour which is my fav book on Rock & Roll of all time.
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They Don't Make Decadence Like That Anymore
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Anyone who has been following (and who can help avoiding it completely?)the ups and downers of the Kate and Pete may find reading this a lesson in how modern civilization is in decline. Even the drug abusers of the past were better at it. Here we have Keith near death but managing to fight harbor masters and incite his fellow musicians. Anita pregnant, but with whose baby--Mick's or Keith's? Bianca and Marianne seen from a distance while Gram Parker stumbles in and out. It would take a pretty bad writer to make this story uninteresting. Greenfield isn't that bad. But he's a bit tedious in his war on music critics who don't see it like him. He seems to depend upon unreliable sources and Wikipedia all too much and his casting of Keith as hero and Mick as villain seems a tad simplistic. And since Keith doesn't really oblige him by doing much more than disappear into bathrooms with heroin for long hours at a time, it seems as if Greenfield is bringing far more of himself into the tale than he ought. You'll still find the pages turning and you'll probably want to go back to the album and listen again. But while the music will stay with you, I don't think this book will.
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The Making of a decadent masterpice
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Just finished and its a great read , putting the reader into Nellcote and the eye of the hurricane. Exile on Main Street is one of the top ten greatest records ever made and to make great rock and roll , as Keith understands perfectly , you need chaos. With Brian Jones gone , Keith took on that mantle and lived with it for another 30 years. The man's a legend. The author is good , its written at a good pace and pages fly by. One thing - Jumpin Jack Flahs wasn't on Sticky Fingers , but I think you know that Robert
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