Bob Spitz on the Rolling Stones and why all great music is a threat

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You could say Bob Spitz knows a thing or two about rock and roll. He helped manage Bruce Springsteen and Elton John at crucial points in their careers. He's met and written about countless stars, Keith Richards, Jane Fonda, Paul McCartney, and more. Today, he's taking you backstage. Yes, welcome to ABC Radio National's live event show Big Ideas with me, Natasha Mitchell.
His award-winning biographies include The Beatles and Deary, the remarkable life of Julia Child, both New York Times bestsellers. And now Bob Spitz has a new one out, which I know many ABC Radio National music lovers will be hankering to get hold of, because it's called Rolling Stones, The Biography. His favourite band, yes, and it is the band that changed the story of rock and roll forever.

**Bob Spitz** (1:35)
I will go on record saying that the Stones are the best rock and roll band in the world. They are the sound of rock and roll. I feel like they invented the sound of rock and roll. They took it from pop, they jacked it up and they hotwired it.
Then every band that came after took a little bit about the Rolling Stones. I recently, two days ago, saw A Shine A Light, the Martin Scorsese film. And if you've ever wanted to see the epitome of a rock and roll band, it's that two and a half hours of the Stones playing those songs.

**Natasha Mitchell** (2:09)
Coming up, yes, Bob Spitz on the Stones, but the host of today's Big Ideas event, seasoned pop music critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Dan DeLuca, is about to dive into a few other classic yarns from Bob's big life backstage. So let's head to the Free Library of Philadelphia in the USA to meet these two fabulous music lovers.

**Bob Spitz** (2:34)
Hello, everyone.

**Dan DeLuca** (2:36)
So we're here to talk about the Rolling Stones. We're here in this august institution to talk about the Rolling Stones. So, yeah, they would love that. That makes us respectable, I think.

**Bob Spitz** (2:44)
Absolutely. I have to tell you, it's so great to be back in Philadelphia. I haven't been here for a long time, but I must tell you that Philadelphia is the town where I learned everything I know about rock and roll.
When I was a little boy, my mom put me in front of the television set for three hours every day to get rid of me, and WFIL was, they had nothing to show during the day, so they put on a show where a guy played records. And it was bandstand, and so I watched bandstand every day of my life when I was a little kid for three hours.

**SPEAKER_7** (3:21)
You grew up in Reading, is that right?

**Bob Spitz** (3:22)
I grew up in Reading. It's also the city where I learned how to play guitar. I took guitar lessons at the Guitar Study Center on 19th Street, and one night walked around the corner to the Gilded Cage, and after the show, walked upstairs, knocked on the dressing room door to tell Joni Mitchell what a great fan I was, and she invited me and a friend in to hear a song she was working on about clouds.
She did. And it's also the city where every Sunday night, religiously, religiously, I listened to Gene Shea. I studied, yeah, absolutely.

**Dan DeLuca** (4:04)
The folk show.

**Bob Spitz** (4:04)
I studied Gene Shea more than I studied any course in college and learned about folk music. And this is also the city where Micah Pell and I decided to launch Bruce Springsteen's career in 19...
Yeah, I can't get that out of my throat, but suffice to say, it was a long time ago. So Philadelphia has been a very, very good city to me and it's great to be here.

**Dan DeLuca** (4:32)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's great to have you here. It's great to have you here. You've written a lot of books.
Some of them, most of them have been about music. There have been some that haven't been about music.

**Bob Spitz** (4:43)
Right.

**Dan DeLuca** (4:44)
You wrote a book about the New York Knicks, which I'll forgive you for doing.