Thanks for these beautiful memories of Stanley Booth, as well as the great forward to his Rolling Stones book. I was lucky enough to get to know him a little bit after I interviewed him for a documentary. Just as you wrote, he could be "Fall down funny" and "serious as a tombstone," sometimes with only seconds to separate the two states. I can't believe he lived so long, or that he's gone so soon.
Your intro is so great,perfect for a book that is just as meaningful, powerful, worth reading as you say it is. I happened to reread it a year or so ago and wow!
I was 16 and with my girlfriend at Altamont that evening and nightmare is a word appropriate for what we experienced. We left after four or so songs, which sounded terrible from the hill overlooking the stage where we’d retreated to get away from the Hell’s Angels, heading out to the somewhere field where the pickup was with the truck bed we’d sat on to get there. Scary.
Thank you for this beautiful tribute. In addition to The Rolling Stones book, I also love his account of being in the studio as Otis Redding recorded “Dock of the Bay,” which can be found in the collection Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South.
I was deeply saddened to hear of Stanley Booth's death (on Facebook, of all places - I sent him a 'friend' request over 10 years ago upon seeing we had a mutual friend; he accepted the request and then seemingly never went near Facebook again, being smarter than me). Having 'discovered' the Rolling Stones at 14 and finding myself instantly enthralled by everything they'd done up to "Exile", I read "The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones" in 1985, the same summer I read "Mystery Train" for the first time. They seemed connected in many ways, but perhaps most notably in that there were moments in Stanley's book which, like the Robert Johnson and Sly Stone/Stagolee chapters in "Mystery Train", I found frightening. And it wasn't just his first-hand account of what he saw at Altamont: some of the quotations which started each chapter (particularly the ones pertaining to Buddy Bolden and the one by Jung) were disturbing. His memory of lying awake in bed, listening to the sounds of the southern night, is one of the most captivating descriptions of fear I've ever read.
But "True Adventures" was also very funny :
(Having dinner with his parents during a break in the tour)
"I wasn't sure what to expect, but I didn't think the Stones cared about the money. My father slid the platter of fried chicken toward me, and I saw in his eyes...a sad, wise look, a look that said, Nobody doesn't care about the money."
There are a hundred other quotations from "True Adventures" that have stuck with me - "It was like blaming the pigs in a slaughterhouse for bleeding on the floor," and the vey prescient one you quoted in your Introduction, about an America that would, in years to come, "become increasingly like Altamont."
It wasn't hard to detect Stanley's deep disappointment and disillusionment at the failure of the 60s to live up to its promises, if that doesn't sound too pretentious. If you failed to detect it, he pretty much spelled it out in his Afterword to the 2000 edition. Even 24 years later, with so much writing viewable on places such as Substack, that afterword is mandatory reading for anyone who thinks they want to write books for a living.
I'm sorry for your loss, Greil. Stanley was one of many people, now departed, whom I would have loved to meet.
“Private eyes, but really public defenders… men who behaved as if there was a point in trying to right wrongs, even if they knew the world better than that.” A fitting description of Stanley and much of his work, too, seeking hidden truths that might defend our souls, if not our bodies, from an Altamontan America.
“To tell you the truth, I can hardly believe he’s dead. I know a number of people like that, who are simply too talented to be dead. ‘I ain’t got nothin’, ain’t never had nothin’, don’t ‘spect to never get nothin’,’ he used to say, ‘but I’ll tell you this: I’m jus’ as smart as any man in this house.’ He always was, too.”
Thanks for these beautiful memories of Stanley Booth, as well as the great forward to his Rolling Stones book. I was lucky enough to get to know him a little bit after I interviewed him for a documentary. Just as you wrote, he could be "Fall down funny" and "serious as a tombstone," sometimes with only seconds to separate the two states. I can't believe he lived so long, or that he's gone so soon.
Your intro is so great,perfect for a book that is just as meaningful, powerful, worth reading as you say it is. I happened to reread it a year or so ago and wow!
I was 16 and with my girlfriend at Altamont that evening and nightmare is a word appropriate for what we experienced. We left after four or so songs, which sounded terrible from the hill overlooking the stage where we’d retreated to get away from the Hell’s Angels, heading out to the somewhere field where the pickup was with the truck bed we’d sat on to get there. Scary.
Thank you for this beautiful tribute. In addition to The Rolling Stones book, I also love his account of being in the studio as Otis Redding recorded “Dock of the Bay,” which can be found in the collection Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South.
I was deeply saddened to hear of Stanley Booth's death (on Facebook, of all places - I sent him a 'friend' request over 10 years ago upon seeing we had a mutual friend; he accepted the request and then seemingly never went near Facebook again, being smarter than me). Having 'discovered' the Rolling Stones at 14 and finding myself instantly enthralled by everything they'd done up to "Exile", I read "The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones" in 1985, the same summer I read "Mystery Train" for the first time. They seemed connected in many ways, but perhaps most notably in that there were moments in Stanley's book which, like the Robert Johnson and Sly Stone/Stagolee chapters in "Mystery Train", I found frightening. And it wasn't just his first-hand account of what he saw at Altamont: some of the quotations which started each chapter (particularly the ones pertaining to Buddy Bolden and the one by Jung) were disturbing. His memory of lying awake in bed, listening to the sounds of the southern night, is one of the most captivating descriptions of fear I've ever read.
But "True Adventures" was also very funny :
(Having dinner with his parents during a break in the tour)
"I wasn't sure what to expect, but I didn't think the Stones cared about the money. My father slid the platter of fried chicken toward me, and I saw in his eyes...a sad, wise look, a look that said, Nobody doesn't care about the money."
There are a hundred other quotations from "True Adventures" that have stuck with me - "It was like blaming the pigs in a slaughterhouse for bleeding on the floor," and the vey prescient one you quoted in your Introduction, about an America that would, in years to come, "become increasingly like Altamont."
It wasn't hard to detect Stanley's deep disappointment and disillusionment at the failure of the 60s to live up to its promises, if that doesn't sound too pretentious. If you failed to detect it, he pretty much spelled it out in his Afterword to the 2000 edition. Even 24 years later, with so much writing viewable on places such as Substack, that afterword is mandatory reading for anyone who thinks they want to write books for a living.
I'm sorry for your loss, Greil. Stanley was one of many people, now departed, whom I would have loved to meet.
“Private eyes, but really public defenders… men who behaved as if there was a point in trying to right wrongs, even if they knew the world better than that.” A fitting description of Stanley and much of his work, too, seeking hidden truths that might defend our souls, if not our bodies, from an Altamontan America.
Incredible writing. Yours, his. A revelation. You've made me understand the times of my life.
One more, from his Furry’s Blues Again:
“To tell you the truth, I can hardly believe he’s dead. I know a number of people like that, who are simply too talented to be dead. ‘I ain’t got nothin’, ain’t never had nothin’, don’t ‘spect to never get nothin’,’ he used to say, ‘but I’ll tell you this: I’m jus’ as smart as any man in this house.’ He always was, too.”