New eBook Chronicles 50 Years of The Rolling Stones

Over the course of 50 years in anyone's life, a lot happens.

Over the course of 50 years in the lives of an internationally famous rock & roll band—well, you catch the drift. 

July 12 marked the 50th anniversary of The Rolling Stones, and to mark the momentuous occassion, German author Hanspeter Künzler put together a 2,000-plus page eBook chronicling the band's historic run of success. 

The book, titled "50 Years – The Rolling Stones. Views from the Inside, Views from the Outside," is published in two parts by The eBook People and is available for sale on Amazon.com and through iTunes. 

Among other things, the book contains interviews conducted by Rolling Stone, The Daily Mail and Daily Express with everyone from girlfriends and wives to The Stones themselves, according to a press release. 

Künzler said he was interested in writing the book because of his interest in the role the band played in European and world history over the past 50 years. 

"What the Beatles and the Rolling Stones started, particularly in Britain and Europe, was that music meant so much more than just a piece of entertainment," the author said. "It was about lifestyle, it was about attitude, it was about interest. If you were a Beatles or Rolling Stones fan, you didn’t just put a record on and bop around in your sitting room. You read up about what sort of films they liked, what sort of books they would read — or even write — what sort of clothes did they wear. Fashion has always been linked to pop music. But even more so, with the Beatles and the Stones that idea came up that people could do it themselves, anybody could do it. So to look into the history of the Rolling Stones is a great opportunity to just look back on European pop history, which then, in a way, then became global history." 

Künzler was asked why he felt The Rolling Stones — for which plays lead guitar — have had such staying power in the music realm. 

"There are a lot of musicians who have a lot of scandals in their past, but nobody remembers them," he said. "Simply because moist didn’t write such brilliant songs. With the Rolling Stones, in whatever situation they were in, whatever the circumstances were, whatever had happened around them, whatever the troubles were—they always wrote fantastic songs. Start Me Up, for instance, is what springs to mind. That was not a particularly easy phase for the Rolling Stones. But still, they came up with a song that everybody loved and they zoomed up the charts everywhere. So that is one thing. Certainly, the scandals helped to keep them in the news—but no band stays in the news if the only have scandals."

Will the Stones ?

"I can’t imagine that they won’t," Künzler said. 

The first part of the book, which chronicles the band's first 25 years, is currently available, with the second part set to be published in the coming weeks. 

To read a snippet from the book, . 

About the author: Hanspeter Künzler has interviewed top stars, including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Tina Turner, Robert Plant, Mark Knopfler, Blur, Oasis and Radiohead. Today, his features appear in a variety of publications around the world, including Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Sublime Magazine, Loop, Guitar Dreams and Musik Express.