Summary: Plenty has been said about The Rolling Stones' illustrious career in books, in magazines, and in documentaries. So when Bill Janovitz set out to write about the Stones again (he wrote a book about Exile On Main St. for the 33 1/3 series), he undertook an epic task of defining the iconic rock band and its decades-spanning music in 50 songs. A founding member of Buffalo Tom and music writer, Janovitz's essays are now compiled in Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell the Story of the Rolling Stones. Janovitz tells Soundcheck host John Schaefer about undertaking this epic task and gives his thoughts on three of the 50 songs he wrote about. Interview Highlights Bill Janovitz, on why he decided to write about 50 Rolling Stones songs: When the idea was first brought to me, "Hey do you want to write another book about the Rolling Stones?", because I wrote one just on the subject of Exile On Main Street for the 33 1/3 series, I said "I don't want to write another one, basically." First of all the story's been told a million times before. Then it was presented to me [as], "What if you're doing 50 tracks for 50 years?" I said, "Well, that's an interesting hook and I would really like to write about the music, I'm not really interested in writing yet another history." This is a nice way to hang the history in the context of the music and vice versa -- how does one affect the other and how does one reflect the other? On "Stray Cat Blues" from Beggars Banquet: It really tells us that their getting back to their roots but also keeping it up to date. I think they found a contemporary home for the blues that wasn't just some sort of period piece. It speaks a little bit of urban decay. I always heard that song as a rock star talking to a groupie and I think that certainly is in it. They're playing up that big bad wolf routine. It has that sort of pre-Taxi Driver look at a pimp's relationship with a young hooker. On his run in with Keith Richards: When I was writing the outline for this book, I actually ran into him fairly coincidentally. PEN New England, a literary organization, was giving out awards. It's first and only so far award for Lyrics of Literary Excellence. They gave it to Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen. It was an amazing assemblage of artists. Keith was there and I was lucky enough to be in the green room just through some connections. Sure enough, Keith just happens to put a drink down on a little side table next to me. He was really gracious and he really pivoted it out of this awkward moment and said, "I feel the same about Chuck Berry, man."
