How A Nice Boy From Brooklyn Got Mixed Up With The Rolling Stones (And lived to tell about it!)

May 31, 2009 - PRLog -- Jacqueline Foreman will be interviewing Bill German live about his tell-all book Under Their Thumb: How A Nice Boy From Brooklyn Got Mixed Up With The Rolling Stones (And Lived To Tell About It) on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 8 PM EDT on Your Mental Health Talk Radio.  You can listen to the show live or in archived format at www.blogtalkradio.com/yourmentalhealth

As a teenager, Bill German knew exactly what he wanted to do with his life: chronicle the career and adventures of his favorite rock band, the Rolling Stones. And in 1978, on his sixteenth birthday, he set out to make his dream a reality.

Feverishly typed in his Brooklyn bedroom and surreptitiously printed in his high school's mimeograph room, German's Stones-only newsletter, Beggars Banquet, was born. His teachers discouraged it, his parents dismissed it as a phase, and his disco-loving classmates preferred the Bee Gees, but, for German, this primitive, pre-Internet fanzine was a labor of love. And a fateful encounter with his idols on the streets of New York soon proved his efforts weren't in vain.

Impressed with Beggars Banquet, the Stones gave the 'zine instant cred on the rock scene by singing its praises - and by inviting German to hang with the band. At first a fish out of water in the company of rock royalty, German found himself spilling orange juice on a priceless rug in Mick Jagger's house and getting pegged as a narc by pals of Keith Richards and Ron Wood. But before long he became a familiar fixture in the inner sanctum, not just reporting Stones stories but living them. He was a player in the Mick-versus-Keith feud and was an eyewitness to Keith's midlife crisis and Ron's overindulgences. He even had a reluctant role in covering up Mick's peccadilloes. "In the span of a few months," German recalls, "I'd gone from wanting to know everything about my favorite rock stars to knowing too much."

In this warts-and-all book, which includes many never-before-seen photographs, German takes us to the Stones' homes, recording sessions, and concerts around the world. He charts the band's rocky path from the unthinkable depths of a near breakup to the obscenely lucrative heights of their blockbuster tours. And ultimately, German reveals why his childhood dream come true became a passion he finally had to part with.

Under Their Thumb is an up-close and extremely personal dispatch from the amazing, exclusive world of the Rolling Stones, by someone who was lucky enough to live it - and sober enough to remember it all.



Early Reviews


"Most people who get to hang with the Stones are either musicians, drug dealers, or groupies. Bill German was a fan who started a magazine for other fans, and ended up becoming good friends with the band. His book tells stories from the inside, a view that few real people ever get to see. And he's not English, or even German, he's from Brooklyn. This book really drew me in."
-- Ian McLagan, keyboard player (Small Faces, Faces, the Rolling Stones, and the Bump Band)

"Most misspent youths don't bear re-telling. But a visit to Bill German's lost years is a riveting sidetrip through rock and roll's loftier heights. And some of its chillier depths."  
-- Chet Flippo, author of On The Road with the Rolling Stones (and former writer for Rolling Stone magazine)


"I've read every word ever written on the subject, and can confidently say that this is the sweetest, funniest, least prurient or cynical account of life with the Rolling Stones. It excels as an insider's history, of both the Stones' waning era of creative untouchability, and of pre-blog fanzine culture. But it's also a romance. Why can't a great, expansive literary love story, recounting giddy highs, crushing lows, and sobering realizations, concern a boy and a band?"
-- Marc Spitz, Spin magazine

"As a Stones fan, I'm a lifer. I've gone through the required reading list and felt my course of study was complete. But German's book has me gladly entering that ‘Rolling Stones library' one more time. His unlikely experience with the greatest rock 'n' roll band in the world - as an innocent kid and journalist - is recalled in great detail. With truth, humor, and the eventual realization that when it comes to the Stones, ‘No Expectations' is your best tool for survival."
-- Meg Griffin, DJ at Sirius/XM Radio (and formerly at WNEW and K-Rock in New York)

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Your Mental Health Talk Radio is a program hosted by Jacqueline Foreman. It deals with mental health issues and illness as well as the stigmas attached to people who suffer from various forms of mental illness. The program also covers any topic that has to do with physical, spiritual and mental well-being. Your Mental Health Talk Radio covers topics as varied as divorce, saving a marriage, depression, anxiety as well as living your best life. This show is truly one of a kind, when coming up with guest and topic ideas, we are always thinking "outside of the box" because we want to help everyone who suffers from mental illness, physical illness, and chronic pain or are just plain unhappy with their lives and need to make lasting changes. Like many of her listeners, Ms. Foreman has suffered from depression, but her message is a message of hope; there is help for those who are hurting.