This book got glowing reviews when it was published in the US a few months ago: ‘Irresistible’ (New York Times); ‘Riveting’ (Boston Globe); ‘Energetic and engaging’ (Washington Post). I kept wondering if I was reading the same book. You wouldn’t have thought it possible to make the Rolling Stones boring, but Bob Spitz somehow manages to. Let me count the ways. By giving his own programme notes on every Stones record; by paying far too much attention to the actual recording process and crediting every new sound engineer; and by totally missing the point that it is the Stones themselves we are interested in.

I’m fairly typical of diehard Stones fans in that I got hooked in the 1960s and have stayed with them ever since. I am now 82. My children have barely heard of them and my grand-children not at all. Their last LA concert in 2024 was sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons. It had an extended interval because the audience took so long to shuffle to the toilets. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were 80; Bill Wyman had retired; and Charlie Watts was dead. But still it attracted 65,000 people. Stones fans are nothing if not loyal. Back in 1969, Mick said: ‘Obviously I can’t do this for-ever. I mean we’re so old.........

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