Memoirist Bill German gathers no moss
 Bill German |
The rock 'n' roll road was a mighty good road. It may still be, for all I know, but from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s, the rock 'n' roll road provided a mighty good and interesting and heady time for a young man named Bill German, who hung out with the Rolling Stones.
"This is the story of how I made it into the Stones' inner sanctum and how I crawled out," German writes. "It's also about the overachievers and underachievers — the groupies, pushers and flunkies — I met along the way. People who dedicated their entire lives to remaining in that sanctum. Some of them are still there, and some got carried off in handcuffs or caskets."
Those words are in the provocatively titled and entertaining "Under Their Thumb: How a Nice Boy From Brooklyn Got Mixed Up With the Rolling Stones (and Lived to Tell About It)" (Villard).
The publishing business being the money-strapped mess that it is, German's book came out two years ago, and since then he has been setting up tours and readings on his own.
He spent last week in the Chicago area talking about the book and attempting to sell copies of it at events at public libraries in Wauconda, Elk Grove Village, Skokie, Downers Grove and Oak Park — places that, needless to say, were never stops on any Rolling Stones tour.
Debby Preiser, the energetic and well-connected community relations coordinator for that latter library, helped cobble together this visit. She did so because, she says, "Bill contacted us and we figured out how we could afford to have him come here from New York. I made some calls and within a couple of days four other libraries signed on. Just the topic was enough to spark a lot of interest."
By the time German arrived at O'Hare last Saturday — no limousine was awaiting his arrival, just Preiser and her "very used" Lexus — Preiser had read the book and "loved it."
German fell for the Stones' music and, combining that ardor with ambitions to be a journalist, started publishing a fanzine that he called Beggars Banquet and ran off copies after sneaking into his high school to use its mimeograph machine. He was 16.
Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ron Wood were living in New York at the time when German met them at an event, and he impressed them with his little publication. "This kid knows what we're doing before we do," Jagger says in the book.
Thus did the whirlwind begin, and it would last for nearly two decades.
"I was the consummate insider/outsider," German says. "I was on tour, in recording sessions, at parties, in their homes. Yes, there were seductions but I wanted to remain sober, remember everything. The high for me was being able to hang out with the Stones."
He is an affable and lively person, often slipping into accents of Jagger, Richards and Wood. And there is still an ebullient innocence to German, even though he's pushing 50 and even though he eventually became disillusioned by the money-driven commercialism and guarded access of the rock 'n' roll scene.
But once upon a time, he says, "I could just pick up the phone and say, 'Hey, Keith, I'll be at your house in a little while.' And there I'd be."
Listen to writer Victor David Giron and musician Seth Boustead on "The Sunday Papers With Rick Kogan," 6:30-9 a.m. Sunday on WGN-AM 720. "Chicago Live!" hosted by Kogan and featuring this week former Chicago Bear Gary Fencik; Michael Darling, the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art; and Las Guitarras de Espana, takes place at 6:30 p.m. Thursdays at the Chicago Theatre. For tickets, go to chicagolive.com.
