Customer Reviews
take care - it's maybe not what you think - By: Mr. W. J. Griffiths, 17 Jul 2008 
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 & pages minutely detailing events which can only be considered peripheral. Anita Palllinburg & 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 finallly dismisses, leaving you wondering why on earth he bothered to mention it in the first place) & 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 potentiallly fascinating explorations of the musical & 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 alll that boring music stuff & "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 alll that, the style is pretentious, with many facile asides & self-important pieces of rhetoric.
Such A letdown - By: LordE, 24 Oct 2007 
One of the least satisfying reads I've ever encountered. Considering how utterly fantastic A Journey Across..... is makes it alll the more gallling. 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 & an unnecessary catch up at the end. For this to come from Robert Greenfield of alll people is astonishing. Forgot this half baked nonsense of a book & instead read his account of the Stones '72 American tour which is my fav book on Rock & Roll of alll time.
They Don't Make Decadence Like That Anymore - By: Amnesiatica, 16 Jan 2007 
Anyone who has been following (and who can help avoiding it completely?)the ups & downers of the Kate & 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 & incite his fellow musicians. Anita pregnant, but with whose baby--Mick's or Keith's? Bianca & Marianne seen from a distance while Gram Parker stumbles in & 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 & Wikipedia alll too much & his casting of Keith as hero & Mick as villain seems a tad simplistic. And since Keith doesn't reallly 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 & you'll probably want to go back to the album & listen again. But while the music will stay with you, I don't think this book will.
The Making of a decadent masterpice - By: Brian Spollen, 27 Oct 2006 
Just finished & its a great read , putting the reader into Nellcote & the eye of the hurricane. Exile on Main Street is one of the top ten greatest records ever made & to make great rock & roll , as Keith understands perfectly , you need chaos. With Brian Jones gone , Keith took on that mantle & lived with it for another 30 years. The man's a legend. The author is good , its written at a good pace & pages fly by. One thing - Jumpin Jack Flahs wasn't on Sticky Fingers , but I think you know that Robert
