“A rolling stone gathers no moss,” is the proverb which
defines the term, and when it comes to music everyone first thinks of the British
rock band, the blokes with their tongue sticking out. But back in the 1950’s and throughout the
60’s, Andy Anderson picked up his guitar and formed a group, the Rolling Stones. Grown out of the cotton fields of
Mississippi and into a legendary rock ‘n’ roll group, they rolled from gig to
gig, down the back country roads in supped up cars, often with their instruments
in tow. This was the start of the new
sound called Rockabilly, when
musicians such as Elvis Presley were being discovered and Jerry Lee Lewis
recorded Great Balls of Fire. A time when Buddy Holley, Johnny Mathis, Nat
King Cole, Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson, Sam Cooke and other legendary musicians all
topped the charts.
In Memoirs of the
Original Rolling Stone, Anderson nostalgically brings his life, his stories
and his personal reflections to the reader with the insertion of scores of
photographs describing how it was to be a rock star. With the help of Erika Celeste and other
contributors to the writing, the reader is brought back to the “Black &
White Days” of entertainment with the good-clean-fun “Frat” parties, school
dances and grass root musical gatherings. Andy Anderson tells the insider’s view of his
dynamic off-beat lifestyle as a traveling musician of the Rolling Stones and the Dawnbreakers.
One incident which I found quite novel is when the group
played at the Sigma Chi house at the
University of Alabama. Anderson wrote,
“Now Snake-eyed Mamas no ordinary
song – there’s a sort of a dance that goes with it, in which the guys would
link their arms and jump in unison.” He
goes on talking about the energy of the music when, “In the next moment people
were tumbling to the floor, crashing and landing on top of each other as the
sound of something ripping to shreds shifted everything a good half-foot. All was quiet as we tried to clear our
drunken minds of the cobwebs. What had
just happened? Millions of stars in the
night sky were winking down at us. What
the hell?” Anderson realized the hole
was in the ceiling and the outer wall of the building had shifted off its foundation
opening the roof. “Talk about tearing
down a place, boy they sure tore it down that night!” surmised Anderson.
But not all was fun and frolic. Life had its lessons. Andy lost his brother Brooks, his younger
brother at the age of 28 from cancer. Andy
wrote, “I realized that life is so very precious. I couldn’t occupy my mind with things that
really didn’t matter. I could no longer
con myself into being something I wasn’t and didn’t want to be. …Brooks taught me more about life. He taught me to be humble and give more than
I take.”
Memoirs of the
Original Rolling Stone is filled with lots of name dropping, some
self-patronizing stories, but the reader can differentiate as Andy Anderson
constantly strived to delicately balance egotistical versus historical
information. The book deals with his indulgence within the ebb and flow of the music industry, then onward to Hollywood, TV and eventually to
an unfortunate welding accident where Andy lost a part of his middle finger,
ending his musical career. It reveals good stories of
interest to not only fans but to all that have an appreciation for the history
of rock ‘n’ roll.
Memoirs of the Original
Rolling Stone is laden with photographs, reads like a documentary and is
entertaining and informative. Plus it
has a happy ending, when Andy Anderson finally meets and falls in love with a
beautiful woman, Kay, nicknamed “Fluffy” and gets married ~ to live happily
ever after. If you love the music of the
50’s and 60’s and those who made it great, you will enjoy this book and the
history legends! Rock on!
Buy this book at Amazon.com
