
From teenage superfan to Rolling Stones insider, Bill German's memoir reveals Keith Richards' surprising warmth and Mick Jagger's aloofness. What happens when a Brooklyn kid's fanzine becomes his backstage pass to rock history's most notorious band?
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September 1978. A sixteen-year-old Brooklyn kid with long hair and a "Free Keef" button sits in his high school supply room, mimeographing copies of a homemade Rolling Stones newsletter. His classmates mock him, embracing disco while he worships guitar gods. Record shops refuse to stock his fanzine. Yet this rejection only fuels his obsession. What Bill German couldn't have known was that his scrappy publication, "Beggars Banquet," would become his golden ticket-a seventeen-year backstage pass that would take him from teenage outcast to drinking bourbon with Keith Richards, cleaning up Mick Jagger's spills, and witnessing the inner workings of rock's greatest band. Unlike sanitized rock memoirs that airbrush the chaos, this story reveals something rarer: what happens when a passionate fan crosses the velvet rope and discovers his heroes are brilliantly flawed humans navigating their own labyrinth of ego, addiction, and betrayal. Keith Richards himself reportedly told his inner circle, "This kid got it right."