S.t.p.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones Paperback – September 3, 2002

Absolutely fabulous book. One of the best insights into not only The Stones, but also life on the road with a big name artist. Greenfield has the brilliant ability of being able to make you feel as if you are there. While I admit that he wanders off into "waxing lyrically" at times, it is such an enthralling read that needs only the occasion skip over a paragraph. Definitely one of my favourite Rock reads ever.

I ever saw a rock show was the afternoon matinee at the Spectrum (RIP) in Philly. I was instantly helplessly hopelessly hooked on live music. I guess I had hoped there would be some revelation in here but I got it as no big deal. It was to me. The book is ok but the movie is better. Co@$sucker Blues.

Just about everyone wishes they were a Rolling Stone. After reading this book, you learn more about the trials, tribulations, highs and lows of traveling across America back in the day. Tours are hard work even today, despite the advances in travel, technology, sound, etc. Greenfield takes you behind the scenes to show how hard the people who support the band work (and play). He also reminds us that even though they're the world's greatest rock and roll band, touring can be a drag. A great combination of personal stories, inside facts, sex, drugs and rock and roll. Partner this read with Stanley Booth's book "Sympathy for the Devil" about the 1969 tour, and you have a great perspective on the band and the "diverse" crew of people who help with the music, the tours, and their lives in general.

Greenfield also wrote a book about the Stones' Exile on Main Street sessions, a flawed tome about a fascinating moment in rock `n' roll history (perhaps the most fascinating). And while that book has been derided and mocked somewhat, I somehow learned more about the Stones in it than I did in this book, which I had high hopes for but which ultimately disappointed me with its shapelessness and its many, many "who cares moments".The book hardly features the Stones, going more into the setup of touring, the mechanics of it, the madness, the insanity, the transportation and some of the parties. In this way, it's a bit like some sort of nutty rock `n' roll staging Apocalypse Now, complete with its very own new journalism McGuffin. There are a few incidents recounted, such as a scuffle with a photographer and an arrest in Rhode Island as Boston burns (the book's most dramatic, feel-good moment). There's the opening of the tour in Vancouver, the dates in San Francisco and hanging out with Bill Graham (who Greenfield has also written a biography of), there's encounters with kids queuing up to buy tickets and girls like Cynthia and Jo-Ann, who are hitch hiking between shows; there's the boredom and insanity of being in the middle of nowhere and there's groupies like Renee being set up for the risque parts of the film that Robert Frank is making during the tour - hey, he gets as much screen time as any of the other principals. Greenfield quotes Charles Bukowski, on Mick Jagger, in the LA Free Press:He tried. And he was wonderful. He spilled more blood on that floor than a five thousand-man army but he didn't make it. He'd been tricked into acceptance... He was tired. He was too much money in. He was too famous. He sucked at the crowd He tried to remember how it was when he first worked it. How it was when he was really and purely real...The book mistakenly notes that Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham had forced Bill Wyman to change his name from Bill Perks, I remember him saying in his autobiography that he'd done this on his own even before he joined the Rolling Stones. Nice interviews with Charlie Watts. Not much about Mick Taylor, who is still a mystery man. Printing goof-up on P137.Transporting the Stones to parties, moving from city to city, getting stuck in traffic, all the mundanities of being on tour. Great description of life at Hugh Hefner's Mansion in Chicago, including a reproduction of memos to the bunnies. Funny Truman Capote anecdotes ("They're complete idiots... Intuition tells me they'll never tour this country again, and in fact will not exist in three years."), since he was there as a writer (although he decided later not to write the story he was preparing), Terry Southern also. Nice anecdotes with Bobby Keys about his days working with Buddy Holly, Bobby Vee, and Delaney and Bonnie. Greenfield describes a cool Keys anecdote of his days on the road with Vee, rehearsing in Moorhead, Minnesota:This kid came in, asking for a gig as a piano player. He said his name was Eldon Gunn and he liked playing Hank Williams' stuff. Everyone in the wand was into wide silk ties, high collar shirts, and Aqua-Net to keep their James Dean hairdos in place, and the kid just didn't fit. So they told him to go home and practice some more and come back when your act's together, and instead he went to New York and became a folksinger by the name of Bob Dylan.There are also tales of real fear as the band gets their equipment dynamited in Montreal (four times!), and Jagger is terrified of being assassinated, either by Hell's Angels still brimming over the Stones' betrayal at Altamont or by Manson Family crazies. What a life, man, what a life, and the Stones have been doing this fifty years this year!!!

What a strange trip! If you are a stones fan or want to know more about the behind the scenes debauchery that was The 72 Rolling Stones Tour party then this book is for you. I wanted to know more about the stories I kept hearing about the Stones and their famous 72 tour party but get it from another source than the band members. This book pulls no punches and covers more than I thought it would.. It was a short book but it still took me 2 airplane flights and a few hours here and there to get through it. I was worried this book would be repetitive and cover the same old stuff. This did cover some of the same old ground you may have heard about here or there but it gave a different perspective on those stories. I will be recommending this book and this definitely will sit on the shelf next to my Keith Richards: Life book.

A great weekend or bedtime read . You have to pace yourself or you will read it in a couple of days and you will regret it !

This party (rock tour) is a flashback to a by-gone age. That will never be seen again.Emagine being on a US tour with the most amazing, wild rock and roll band. This book tells the story. An inside look of a rock and roll tour...durring a time when anything goes.[from the book]As Hef (Hugh Hefner while the Stones stayed over at the Playboy mansion in Chicago) sits playing backgammon at a long table under a spotlight, with Bill Wyman, the butler-waiters line the sideboards with trays of weet, creamy chocolate elclairs. They fill chafing dishes to the brim of steaming lobster tails and place bowls of drawnt butter where they'll be easy to reach. The STones and the S.T.P. people sit down for their last fre meal at Hef's.Enjoy the book

Great book on The Rolling Stones 1972 concert tour. Makes you feel very much as you if you are there in the inner circle of The Rolling Stones. I read the book , enjoyed it so much I immediately read it again! A must for Stones fans.

Very well written account of the Stones 1972 American tour.The immediacy and the characters jump out at you.In my humble opinion a never matched tour de force.

LooksLike a great read

Reissued chronicle of one journalist's experience hanging out with the Rolling Stones during their '72 USA tour. 45 years later it remains a fascinating read.

My problem with this book is that it doesn't focus on the Rolling Stones. It does an adequate job of describing the culture surrounding the Stones on their 1972 North American tour, but it does nothing to give us a glimpse of what the band members were like, behind the scenes. Of course Jagger and Richards are covered, but barely. If you didn't know better, you'd think that Bobby Keys was a founding member of the Rolling Stones after reading this book. Watts, Wyman, and the always-ignored Mick Taylor are hardly mentioned. The last third of the book is its only saving grace, but still does not salvage what should have been a great read.On a side note, a book written along the same premise, that succeeds everywhere STP does not, is Billion Dollar Baby, by Bob Greene. Greene writes about the original Alice Cooper group's Muscle of Love tour in the fashion that Greenfield failed to. For an inside glance at what a rock n' roll tour was like in the early '70s, read Billion Dollar Baby. The problem is that Greene's book has been out of print for 2 or 3 decades and is very expensive on the second-hand market (when you can find it). But definitely mandatory reading if you can find it for a decent price.