Author Cohen: 'The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones' (Audio)

Federal Reserve will tighten policy this summer. The s and P up twenty eight points to two thousand seventy six, a gain of one point four percent, as stack up ninety five points, a gain of two percent. The Dow Jones Industrial average hired by two hundred thirteen points, up

one point two percent. Tenure down seven thirty seconds, yield there one point eight six percent, Gold down twenty three ninety the ounce to twelve seven sixty, a drop there of one point nine percent, Crude of one and a half percent to forty eight dollars seventy nine cents a barrel. I'm Charlie Pellett, and that's Bloomberg Business Flash. You're listening to Taking Stock with Bim Box and Kathleen Hayes on Bloomberg Radio, The Sun and The Moon and the Rolling Stones.

What can we learn from a new book by author Richard Cohen called The Sun and the Moon and the Rolling Stones? What can we learn about Business? For Everyone? Here to tell us more is the author Rich Cohen. Thanks for being with us. Rich Hey, thanks for having me. Um, You've got to tell people a little bit of your background so that they understand how you came to be

so informed about the writing of this book. You are not just some guy who was interested in the Stones and wanted to write a book that combined their history plus your own journey. Tell us about your relationship. Well, I was, you know, a Stone fanatic as a kid, and usually that was the music of my big brother who locked me out of his room. So it had a great value to me because it wasn't allowed near it.

And Um, right after college, I got a job at Rolling Stone Magazine, and I got this crazy assignment to go up to Toronto where the Rolling Stones were putting together a show and just basically hang out with them for two weeks and watched them assemble this show where they were in an old elementary school, Jim School. At night, you always know what's happening the Rolling Stones are putting together the show and just sort of watched just me

and them as they put together this this show. And then I went on the road with them and they wrote a bunch of stories about them, and then after that finished, I then got hired by Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese to work on a movie about the rock and roll business, which eventually became Vinyl on HBO, and um, so I had this long you know, we worked on that screenplay for like six or seven years, and I had this realization about a year ago, driving around in

the car with my son listening to his terrible music, that rock and roll, which had been so important to us, kind of died in the mid nineties, and the Rolling Stones were the great band that survived. And if you could figure out the secret of them, you could figure out the secret of everything. I just think it's interesting today. You know, it's Bob Dylan's seventy fifth birthday, and of course, um,

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards not far behind at age seventy two. Uh. One of the things that's interesting to me is what a phenomenally successful business the Stones have been. Of Course, a lot of bands go on tours now, because that's how you really make the money, not selling any kind of vinyl or anything like that. Mick Jagger course attended

the London School of Economics for a while. Tell us about that part of the Stones story, Well, actually, the Rolling Stones were you know when I even covered them. They're kind of one way to think of them as a giant corporation that rolls around the world and makes billions and billions of dollars. And the story really comes

out of trauma, which is early on. The Stones worshiped these sort of um African American blues musicians like Mighty Waters, and the story with them as they always got ripped off by the record company, and the Stones, of course winds with every part of their experience got ripped off by their record company, specifically by their manager, Alan Klein, and it really it's acted their music um the Alan Klein also represented the Beatles and a lot of other people,

and as a result of what he did, the Rolling Stones were broke in the early seventies and they didn't even own the rights to their own songs and they still don't, so a lot of the great Rolling Stone songs they don't own the rights to it. Was sort of taken from them by Alan Klein, and they had they were living in England, where the marginal tax rate was, I think, and they realized that they could never pay that tax back and stay in the country, so they

went into tax exile. They went into this old mansion in the south of France and they made this record Exile on Main Street, which is like the greatest rock and roll record ever made, and exile because they were

these tax exiles. And at that point Mick Jagger, I think, because he had gone to London School of Economics and he was very smart, was embarrassed by what had happened, that he had been taken, and he started to really assert control and turned it into this kind of business that's a model for all rock and roll on the road. And that really is where they got their savvy was through terrible experience. Rich Let's just focus on some of the lessons that people in business may be able to

learn from the book. I want you to talk about cutting the anchor before it drags you down, right, Okay. So the Rolling Stones were actually founded by this guy, Brian Jones. He founded the band. He had the vision. He was the best music musician in the band. But at a certain point he became a problem. He became a drug addict, he became an LSD problem, and he actually started getting busted to the point where he couldn't

go on tour. And that's how a lot of bands ended, you know, some member of Theirs ended up where he couldn't leave the country, couldn't play. What Mick Jagger and Keith Richards did is they actually, after a year of trying to get it right, when inspired their founder and I always thought it was a situation where they had to cut the anchor to set themselves free. And it's I always thought that the really sentimental people, the really kind people, don't make it. One lessons of the Stones

has always been the ruthless. I mean, if you want to survive, you have to be ruthless about your decision making. And they were the most most ruthless about getting away from people that were hurting them or not helping them. You also talk about never stop reinventing, Well, that's to

me fascinating. Which is their first manager who really figured out what they were, which was kind of the anti Beatles, said to them every five years, you have to reinvent yourself, if you're if you're a band, because the five years is how long it takes a kid to go from being a sophomore in high school in the workforce, and now you have a new sophomore in high school who wants his own music, So you have to become that new music for that new kid. You have to kind

of change to stay the same. And that's what the Stones were better at than anybody, even the Beatles is constantly reinventing themselves. So in every new era, they're a new band, which is why they can still go on the road now because for so many different generations they were the band of high school. Okay, it's a tough

question your favorite Stones song or maybe album. I think my favorite Stone song is um Wild Horses Um, and I think that's just because there's a there's actually footage of them having making it in muscle shows Alabama and then listening to it, and the look on their faces when they're listening to their own music is this look of we had this sound in our head and somehow we got that sound into a record, and it was a look of complete artistic contentment and success. Rich Cohen,

thank you so much for joining us. I think mine might be time is on my side, but I don't know. There's so many great songs from the Stones, The Sun and the Moon and the Rolling Stones by Rich Cohen. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you for joining me. Kathleen Hays and Pimpbox right here on taking stock on Bloomberg Radio. Coming up on Bloomberg Law, a discussion about

antitrust lawsuits against sixteen of the world's largest banks. Could it overwhelm the banks by requiring them to pay triple damages? We'll find out