BLANK SLATE MEDIA June 14, 2019
YOUR GUIDE TO THE ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND DINING
NEW YORK AND THE STONES NEW BIO CHARTS THE RISE OF THE ROLLING STONES, WITH NEW YORK AS THE BACKDROP BY G R AC E M CQ UA D E
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here’s been much written about the Rolling Stones over the years, but one Long Island writer’s take on the iconic rock band takes root in our own backyard. In “Can’t Give It Away on Seventh Avenue: The Rolling Stones and New York City,” to be published by Post Hill Press June 25, local author Christopher McKittrick explores how the rise and progression of the British rock group over the past 50 years closely parallels the evolution of New York City from the 1960s and beyond. A Port Jefferson native and an entertainment writer who has interviewed industry luminaries, including M. Night Shyamalan, Nick Hornby, Richard Linklater, and Ed Burns, McKittrick took a phone break from his latest assignment in Los Angeles to discuss his book and fascination with the Rolling Stones. “I always noticed that probably since 1975, when the Stones did a huge tour announcement by rolling a flatbed truck down Fifth Avenue playing ‘Brown Sugar,’ that they have announced most of their tours with major publicity stunts in New York,” McKittrick said about the inspiration behind his book. He pointed out that the Stones have done some of their biggest concerts in the area, with two upcoming shows at Met Life Stadium on Aug. 1 and Aug. 5. “The Rolling Stones have this really strong connection to New York, and what’s even more apparent to me as someone who grew up here is how many references to New York are in the Rolling Stones’ songs,” McKittrick said, a fact that led to the title of his book. “The reference that’s in the title, ‘Can’t Give It Away on Seventh Avenue,’ is a line in the Rolling Stones’ song ‘Shattered,’ which is
about the ‘70s’ dirty, grimy New York City,” he said. “The entire album that song comes from, ‘Some Girls,’ has about five or six six songs on it that directly reference New York or Manhattan or Central Park or something New York-related.” This has always intrigued McKittrick about the Stones, so he decided to take a closer look at the band’s history, reading biographies and sorting through more than 50 years of interviews they gave to reveal how the group – and their second home, New York City – have changed since their very first visit. “When they came here in 1964, they were sort of like the dirty cousins of the Beatles,” McKittrick said, noting that this resembled New York City in the ‘60s and the ‘70s,
“having that element of danger, that element of rough around the edges.” “When the Beatles arrived in the early part of 1964, they were already world famous at that point. They arrived here with screaming people at the airport and they already had hit songs in America,” McKittrick said. “When the Stones first came here a few months later, they didn’t have a hit single. They didn’t even have an album out.” McKittrick said the Stones’ arrival was “anticlimactic” until they got to their tour’s final two shows at Carnegie Hall, which he described as “pandemonium” and “so crazy” that rock bands were banned from playing
there for a year and the Stones were never invited back. “So already they made an impression on New York right off the bat as kind of the bad boys of rock ‘n’ roll,” McKittrick said. “By the end of that decade, they were playing sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden multiple nights, which goes to show how much had changed for them in just five short years.” In the 1970s, the Rolling Stones’ relationship with New York would only grow stronger, landing them on Long Island in the summer of ’75 to rehearse for the Flatbed Truck tour. Continued on Page 48