Dust jacket: "From the author of the best-selling Shout!, hailed by The New York Times as 'the definitive biography of the Beatles,' comes a revelatory - and equally definitive - look at Rock 'n' Roll's greatest, longest-running phenomenon: The Rolling Stones. In 1962, The Rolling Stones were a 'self-defeatingly modest' group of rhythm-and-blues purists fronted by a self-conscious economics student, rehearsing in the back room of a Soho pub. By 1964, they were the scourge of Britain's parents, condemned for their wild music, their ill manners and what the British press called their 'ugliness.' They were the band whose music put a generation on the rampage, whose lyrics made a pact with the devil. And by the end of the decade, they had become royalty - boy monarchs ruling a court as intricate as the Sun King's. From interviews with most of the major characters - among them Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull, Bill Wyman, ex-Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and Anita Pallenberg - to a host of minor ones who shed light on the elusive past that shaped the men and their music, Philip Norman has extracted the essence of the twenty-year road show that is the Stones' history. Symphony for the Devil gives us an indelible portrait of the Stones - singly and together - as they have never been seen before. Here is Jagger, perhaps the most potent sex symbol of the twentieth century, chameleon and social climber. The consummate public libertine, he is seen in private as conservative, cautious, prone to small-mindedness - yet capable of great chivalry. Here is 'The Human Riff,' Keith Richards - unrepentant Gypsy and outlaw, epitome of the Stones' decadence in his one-man heroin odyssey, at the same time soul and mainspring of their music. And here is the late Brian Jones, the brilliant intuitive blues musician who gave the Stones their name and ambition, but whose self-destructive insecurity destined him for persecution, alienation, and lonely death...."