Moonlight Miles follows the footsteps of the Rolling Stones across America

Attached below is a book review that has been published in the latest issue of The West End Times that will surely please fans of the Rolling Stones. Author Chris Epting is a pop culture historian/enthusiast with a difference. He likes to travel widely across the U.S. to research, "dig up" and rediscover the known and unknown landmarks that have shaped American pop culture, and the result of his travels have been a series of fascinating books (and I've read quite a few of them, and they have never failed to both entertain and inform). So if you're a die hard fan of the Rolling Stones and one day would like to embark upon a unique road trip that would retrace the band's footsteps across America during their formative, turbulent years (1964-1981), then check out "Moonlight Miles".

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Moonlight Miles by Chris Epting (Miniver Press, $2.99, e-book)

Author Chris Epting is a pop culture traveler.

For years, he has travelled the length and breadth of the United States, from coast to coast, in search of the still standing and disappeared landmarks of American pop culture. He searches for the places where its significant events happened, as well as where TV, movie and rock music stars performed, lived and died. 

And unlike the typical archaeologist whose concrete proof of his discoveries are the ancient artifacts that are dug up and ready for display in a museum, Epting’s discoveries are usually marked by photographs of these sites, along with thorough research of the stories behind these familiar and not-so-familiar pop culture landmarks. And his discoveries have transcended into a series of fascinating books that are like travel guides with a big difference, such as “James Dean Died Here” and “Roadside Baseball”.

In his latest book of this nature (which is exclusively available as an e-book), Epting retraces the steps that were made across America by the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band – the Rolling Stones – which is called “Moonlight Miles”. The book covers the period from their first visit to America as the antithesis to the Beatles in 1964, to their “Tattoo You” tour of 1981. And like his other books, Epting journeys across America to find the significant and insignificant sites, only this time he is in search of the places that shaped the tumultuous history of the Stones in America during their formative years.

He begins “Moonlight Miles” with a visit to an empty lot adjacent to the National Orange Show Events Center in San Bernardino, California. The lot was once the site of the Swing Auditorium, which was torn down in 1981. Why the visit to this empty lot? Epting notes that it was at the former Swing Auditorium where the Rolling Stones played their very first live concert in the U.S. on the night of June 5, 1964. However, Epting writes an interesting footnote to the group’s first American concert in San Bernardino. The night before, during the Stones’ first American TV appearance on the ABC variety series “The Hollywood Palace”, singer Dean Martin, who also appeared on that week’s broadcast, pointed to the image of a man bouncing on a trampoline during the show and said rather insultingly (and on live TV in front of millions of viewers): “This is the father of the Rolling Stones. He's been trying to kill himself ever since.”

From there, we go on a cross-country guided tour of the Rolling Stones’ America. We visit the old Boston Garden, where during their turbulent 1972 tour, the group arrived with a police escort after they were arrested in Rhode Island for assault and obstructing police (and after opening act Stevie Wonder played an extended opening set at the Garden to keep the fans calm); there’s the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, where Keith Richards woke up in the middle of the night with a guitar riff in his head, got his guitar, wrote down the riff’s notes and went back to sleep (that later became the famous opening riff of their first big hit “Satisfaction”); there’s 2600 Franklin Canyon Drive in Los Angeles, which is the site of the lake where the familiar fishing hole opening of “The Andy Griffith Show” was filmed in 1960 and six years later, the group held a photo session for an unreleased album that was to be called “Could You Walk On The Water?” (one of the photos was later used for the cover of their first greatest hits album called “Big Hits (High Tide and Green Grass)”); and of course, there’s Altamont … the Livermore, California raceway where the Stones’ most controversial concert took place that was supposed to be a free concert as a thank-you gesture by the Stones to their fans, but thanks to the miscalculation of using members of the Hell’s Angels as security, ended up with the violent death of 18-year-old spectator Meredith Hunter.

The book is filled with plenty of great research and never-heard-before anecdotes that further add to the legend that is the Rolling Stones, as they left their mark in America in more ways than one. There’s also plenty of “then and now” photos of some of the sites that Epting visited during the course of his research (including the empty lot that was once the Swing Auditorium, home of the Stones’ first U.S. concert), as well as play lists of selected Stones concerts throughout this 17-year period that’s covered in the book (for example, a typical play list from their inaugural 1964 American tour included cover versions of songs by Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Buddy Holly).

“Moonlight Miles” is quite an entertaining pop culture road trip. Rolling Stones fans will certainly want to follow Epting’s example and discover the places where Mick, Keith, Brian, Charlie, Bill and Ron changed the face of rock music during their unique brand of the British Invasion of America. As a result, they’ll certainly get plenty of “satisfaction” reading this book.