
Not only is 2022 the 60th anniversary of The Rolling Stones’ formation, but it is also 50 years since their Exile On Main Street album. A rather grand anniversary edition of Jim Marshall’s photobook The Rolling Stones 1972 – updated to include contact sheets, enhanced photos, a foreword by Keith Richards and an essay by Anton Corbijn – is out too.
Marshall was commissioned by Life magazine to photograph the Stones as they toured the USA’s west coast in 1972, and given full access to the band over seven days. As such, we witness Richards and Mick Jagger at LA’s Sunset Sound studios, working on post-production for Exile…; Bill Wyman, deep in conversation with John Lee Hooker backstage at Winterland in San Francisco. Tina Turner is here too, as is Stevie Wonder, who opened for the Stones.
The onstage photos are electrifying, with the band playing to an extremely cool-looking (and notably multicultural) audience who themselves feature in a fair few images herein, while offstage shots are highly atmospheric and revealing. A fly-on-the-wall photographic documentation of the Stones at the height of their powers, this is the book to devour with Exile On Main Street cranked up high.
The Rolling Stones 1972, photographs by Jim Marshall; text by Joel Selvin (Chronicle Books)
Price: £30. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT