Dora Loewenstein: The Stones try to remember their past

The Rolling Stones tell their story in Weidenfeld&Nicolson Illustrated's big book of the autumn, According to the Rolling Stones (22nd August, £30, 029784332X), which incorporates new interviews and previously unseen photographs owned by the band. The publisher has world rights and, with a serial deal in place, content is under wraps; however, the book's editor Dora Loewenstein is on hand to talk about the experience of putting the "autobiography" of the band together.

Loewenstein is the daughter of the Stones' financial advisor, and has known Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ronnie Wood since childhood. She started working on their tour production in the mid-1980s, and having edited The Rolling Stones: A Life on the Road (Virgin, 1998), took on the role once more when a more serious, in-depth look at the band's own story was being discussed.

"Our task was to come up with a completely different format, and this is much more of a classic book," she explains. "We felt we'd done the scrapbook style, and we didn't want a 'dip in, dip out' book. We wanted to invite people to read it cover to cover."

The interviews--interspersed by essays from observers such as photographer David Bailey and Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records--were "a challenge" to organise, she says. "While the band is touring, it is incredibly difficult to work interviews into their schedule, because they are very focused on their live performances."

Music journalist Robert Bowman and Sir Tim Rice--apparently an inveterate Stones fan--were drafted in. "The idea was to give the book a fresh approach, and we were very keen to keep the Rolling Stones interested as well. Robert Bowman asked completely different questions to those that have been asked in interviews before--a lot of them about the band's music making and influences from other artists, and involvement from producers and artists along the way.

"We thought Tim Rice would be an interesting person to have as an interviewer, because he is involved in putting on spectacles. We wanted to give a good balance across the band's 40 years, and beginning with the Steel Wheels tour, the Stones had to adapt to a more commercial world and put on visually entertaining shows."

Of course, the notorious hell-raising of the band had to be covered too. Here the problem was that a certain fogginess had crept into the Stones' memories: "You can live through the same experience and be in the same room as someone, and come out and tell a different story," Loewenstein says. "Obviously for all of them there was so much going on in their lives--as well as too many beers and what have you--that the memory is slightly misty at some points. When you travel from hotel to hotel it all becomes a mish-mash. So it was key to have Robert Bowman saying, 'This is what happened here.'"

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