Like a Rolling Stone: The Strange Life of a Tribute Band

By Steven Kurutz
224 pp. Broadway Books, 2008 $23.95

Reviewed by Jeremy Ohmes

Tribute bands occupy a peculiar place in the musical landscape. Like fake Rolexes or cubic zirconias, tribute bands are cheap, accessible and, for many, a perfectly fine substitute for the real deal. Some may say, why pay $100 for poor stadium sound and nosebleed seats to see Van Halen when I can catch Hot for Teacher at the corner bar for no cover? Of course, most people would rather be at a Van Halen concert, and the musicians in Hot for Teacher would rather be in Van Halen, but tributes are a compromise. They are the next best thing and as this book points out, sometimes that’s even better than the real thing. 

In his highly entertaining journey into the heart of the tribute world, The New York Times writer Steven Kurutz hops aboard the rollercoaster ride that is “the leading international Rolling Stones tribute show” a.k.a. Sticky Fingers. One of the oldest and best-established tribute acts, Sticky Fingers pride themselves on their authenticity and their willingness to play anywhere, from dingy southern fraternity houses to half-empty banquet halls to huge overseas stadiums. The band is led by the New Jersey-born Glen Carroll, a flamboyant and mercurial middle-aged Mick Jagger look-alike who slips in and out of a British accent, drinks vodka-cranberries while driving a convertible, and once threatened to fire a guitarist because his hair was not proper Ron Wood length. A rotating cast of musicians revolve around Carroll including a bassist who paints houses on the side and a chain-smoking, ex-junkie guitar player who looks like and always dresses like Keith Richards ... always.

Kurutz rides shotgun with the band (and often drives them) as they shadow the real Rolling Stones 2005-06 arena tour and play pre-concert, dive-bar gigs in city after city. Along the way Kurutz tosses out hilarious anecdotes as furiously as a rock star throwing guitar picks to a crowd. He goes into depth about the gang-like rivalries within the tribute band world, namely between Sticky Fingers and their archrivals, the Blushing Brides. He examines what one musician describes as “tributitis” or the enlarged ego that tribute musicians acquire when they identify too closely to the rock stars they’re portraying.

Kurutz spends so much time with tribute bands that when he eventually sees the actual Rolling Stones, he views them as basically a tribute to themselves. He says, “Seeing the Stones in concert is like seeing an elaborately staged, carefully orchestrated tribute show because it is more about memory conjuring than making new memories, about the past rather than the present.” Sly insights like these make Like a Rolling Stone not only an honest portrait of life on the lower rungs of the music industry, but also a fascinating critique of what is really genuine in a retro-minded culture.