John Blake snaps up The Rolling Stones biography

Bonnier Books UK has signed a new history of The Rolling Stones from music journalist Lesley-Ann Jones.

James Hodgkinson, senior editor at Bonnier Books UK, acquired world rights in The Stone Age in a deal with Clare Hulton Literary Agency.

The Stone Age will be published under the John Blake imprint. The book will track the band’s legacy through the glory years, the exile years, the big-machine years, and into rock music’s ongoing reckoning. It will also feature new and first-hand interviews with those closest to the band.

Jones is a London-based biographer, novelist, broadcaster and keynote speaker, and the author of several rock star biographies, including: Bohemian Rhapsody: The Definitive Biography of Freddie Mercury; Hero: David Bowie; Ride a White Swan: The Lives & Deaths of Marc Bolan; and Who Killed John Lennon. She has met and socialised with all of The Rolling Stones’ members, apart from the late Brian Jones. 

She said: “The Rolling Stones are the root of all rock bands. Their core founding line-up is still going, 60 years on. They created the soundtrack to millions of lives, but the fallout from their hedonistic, death-defying lifestyle has been immense. It has damaged and even destroyed many women, children and band associates. The band themselves, meanwhile, have rocked on regardless, and have achieved a curious respectability in old age. Their frontman Mick Jagger, once the most anti-establishment of them all, is now a knight of the realm. I set out to discover why we still revere the Stones, even though they represent so much that we find unacceptable and even abhorrent today.”

Hodgkinson added: “Lesley-Ann combines deft psychological probing with finding new perspectives through the important women in the lives of complex men. The Stones have a long, chequered history, ripe for modern exploration. The Stone Age is a book that will balance tying together their epic history with their increasingly uncomfortable legacy. This will be the Stones juggernaut appraised and dissected as never before: the good, the bad, the ugly.”

John Blake will publish The Stone Age on 2nd June 2022 in hardback, e-book and audiobook.