It's every rock 'n' roll fan's dream - to hang out with the band they love. But for Bill German it wasn't just a dream - it was a job. When 16 year old Bill German, up late in his pj's, put the finishing touches to the first issue of his Rolling Stones fanzine Beggars Banquet, little did he know he'd embarked on a rock odyssey that would take him from his tiny bedroom in Brooklyn into the inner sanctum of the greatest rock band in the world. Shyly pushing his crudely mimeographed newsletter into the hands of band members as they bundled into limos, personally delivering every issue to their New York office, little did he suspect the Stones were actually reading it. Yet they were - it was the only way they could keep tabs on each other - and suddenly the teenager found himself drawn into a heady world of after show parties, impromptu jam sessions, world tours, drug smuggling and late night heart-to-hearts. And there - between stops at Clapton's pad and the White House - he found a band profoundly uncertain of its future and constantly on the verge of break-up.
Bill's memoir is a touching, naive, raucous, bittersweet journey from adolescence to mid-life crisis, but also the story of a band in transition. The 1980s saw the death of founder Stone Ian Stewart; the strains and rivalries of their burgeoning solo careers; and, with the launch of Steel Wheels in 1989, The Rolling Stones' final apotheosis from devil may care enfants terribles, to mature stadium rockers. Bill German saw it all and in Under Their Thumb he describes how he, Mick, Keith, Ron, Bill and Charlie finally came of age. And how a nice boy from Brooklyn played with fire and lived to tell the tale. www.BeggarsBanquetOnline.com
- ISBN10 1400066220
- ISBN13 9781400066223
- Publish Date 24 February 2009
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Villard Books
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 368
- Language English