The Rolling Stones are gearing up to release their latest album Foreign Tongues, and now there’s a juicy new biography from author Bob Spitz that offers a comprehensive, unsparing and bloody history of the biggest rock band of all time.

The moment Mick Jagger strutted on to the stage for the first time, their fate was set. From their earliest days as blues-obsessed kids to living in freezing squalor, to the first taste of fame and the day they landed in the US and went stratospheric – and all the grit, glamour and gore in between – the book uses Spitz’s own knowledge of the band along with archive Rolling Stones interviews and new commentary from their colleagues and friends.

Of course, many of these tales have long-been cemented into rock ‘n roll lore, but with a history as colourful as the Stones’, is it any wonder we keep revisiting them?

Here are just five of the myriad key moments from the book, from the moment the band’s name was chosen to a fateful first encounter with The Beatles.

The moment the Rolling Stones were born

In June 1962, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones and Dick Taylor wanted to place an ad in Jazz News to state that they were available for paid gigs. Sitting on the carpet in Brian Jones’s “grubby” flat on Powis Square, they were asked for a band name and realised they’d never discussed it.

“Instead of asking the others – prompting a debate that could go on for hours – [Jones] did a quick one-eighty and noticed a Muddy Waters Chess album on the floor behind them,” Spitz writes. “He picked it up and checked out the list of songs on the back cover, stopping at the first one – ‘Rollin’ Stone Blues’.”

“We’re the Rollin’ Stones,” he told the operator.

As Spitz notes, we’re now 65 years on and no one has objected yet.

Brian Jones had a ‘rebellious streak that bordered on anarchic’

Brian Jones, one of the band’s founding members and arguably its most notorious when it came to their sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll lifestyle, was a “handful right out of the crib”, Spitz writes. Born on 28 February 1942, he is described as “an overachiever who mastered chess, learned a number of unrelated musical instruments, drew a variety of figures to scale and perfection, and displayed a photographic memory for detail. But he had trouble paying attention, was disruptive in social situations, and had a rebellious streak that bordered on anarchic. His parents were at a loss.”

Jones’s father was an aeronautical engineer for a company specialising in the manufacture and repair of aircraft equipment, while his mum Louise, taught piano to neighbourhood children. Louise Jones described her son as “strange” while his father, Lewis Jones, “hardly knew how to deal with him”. One of Jones’s first girlfriends described the family home as “sterile… very proper… no feeling”.

Yet Jones still proved himself as something of a prodigy, teaching himself several different instruments before homing in on the guitar. After moving to London from Cheltenham, he befriended a number of young musicians on the scene, for a brief time performing under the name “Elmo Lewis”.

Elsewhere in the book, Spitz documents how after co-founding the Stones and giving them their name, Jones grew jealous over the relationship between bandmates Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, who led the band’s direction away from blues and towards their pioneering rock ‘n roll sound. He abused drugs and alcohol and became increasingly unreliable, ultimately feeling pushed out: he was dismissed in June 1969. Less than a month later, he died by drowning aged 27 in the swimming pool at his home in east Sussex.

How Keith Richards came up with the iconic ‘Satisfaction’ riff

The Stones had returned to the US after a few shows in Paris, where they met then 23-year-old model and actor Anita Pallenberg for the first time. Ahead of a gig at New York’s Academy of Music, they checked into the Fort Harrison Hotel. Keith went to bed as usual with a guitar and cassette recorder within reach.

Early in the morning, he woke up, dazed, picked up his guitar and hit record, playing what he’d heard in his head. He muttered a few words along with it: “I can’t get no satisfaction,” before collapsing back into deep sleep.

He didn’t remember anything the next day but checked the recorder to find it had wound all the way to the end of the reel. When he rewound it to the beginning, he hard himself singing: “On the tape, you can hear me drop the pick, and the rest of the tape” – about 40 minutes in length – “is me snoring.”

But he knew the riff he’d come up with was “undeniable”, Spitz wrote. Richards played it to Jagger later this morning, and it would go onto feature what is now regarded as perhaps the most iconic riff in the history of rock ‘n roll.

The day the Rolling Stones met The Beatles

The Stones had been picking up plenty of traction with their live shows: “it was soul-stirring, loud and uncompromising – much like what had been going on at the Cavern [Club], 220 miles to the north,” Spitz says.

“The word of mouth was incredible… The Rolling Stones were drawing startlingly large crowds. The band realised what was at stake. Sundays became an exhausting doubleheader, playing an afternoon gig at Ken Collyer’s club in Soho, before driving straight to the Station Hotel, where they gaped out the van window at the scene.”

“The Rolling Stones had caught fire. The music they were playing and the way they played it struck a chord with a young crowd starved for something different, something their own.”

One Sunday afternoon, the Stones were wrapping up the last of those gigs at Colter’s club, with an audience described as “annoyingly polite”.

One of the regulars, a “snaggletoothed guitar player” who turns out to be Eric Clapton, was observing the crowd when he noticed a frenzy at the door: “These guys came in all wearing the same thing – black leather gear and the same haircut,’” Eric Clapton recalled. Bill Wyman immediately picked up the same vibe. ‘S***,’ he thought, ‘that’s the Beatles!’

“The crowd parted as the four Beatles marched through the mass of dancers and planted themselves directly in front of the stage. The Rolling Stones, for their part, didn’t miss a beat. They simply turned up the heat, not at all intimidated, except for Mick, who said, ‘I didn’t want to look at them. I was too embarrassed.’”

George Harrison later recalled being blown away by the performance: “The beat the Stones laid down was so solid it shook off the walls and seemed to move right inside your head.” Ringo Starr, meanwhile, was mesmerised by the onstage chemistry between Jones and Richards: “Keith and Brian – wow!” he exclaimed. “They just had a presence.”

The two bands met by the bar during a break and the Stones convinced the Beatles to stick around for the second set, then hang around back at their squalid flat in Edith Grove. The Beatles invited them to be guests four days later at their Royal Albert Hall debut.

“It was an eye-opener,” Spitz writes. “The reception the Beatles received from mostly 14-year-old girls was chaotic, unlike anything the Stones had ever heard. Shrieks and screams continued throughout the Beatles’ entire set, just sheer pandemonium, causing the band to flee after taking a bow.”

The year the Stones broke America

The Stones claimed their own iteration of “Beatlemania” when they landed in the US on 7 February 1964, two months before the release of their debut album. “To cats like Charlie [Watts] and me, America was fairyland,” Richards said. “To be paid to go there and play to Americans, we were s****ing ourselves.”

Unlike the Fab Four and their American invasion, the Stones spurned any schmoozing with the US media or giggling on chat shows with their grinning hosts. They were already the toast of London, with a number one album and relentless coverage in the British press. When they stepped off the plane at JFK to a crowd of around 500 fans, “all hell broke loose” and they were bundled through customs and, to their indignation, a health check: word had got out that they were “dirtier, wilder, freakier, more disheveled” than their mop-haired rivals.

They struggled, too, with dismissive or downright mocking hosts for filmed performances, among them a snooty Dean Martin. But again, it was the live shows where they made their impact: a riot squad was called to the Swing Arena in San Bernardino, where “crowds of kids swarmed the crowds” and tried to ram through the doors.

During the show, the band “let it rip”, Spitz writes, using some savvy crowd-pleasing during “Route 66”, as Jagger sang: “Flagstaff, Arizona, don’t forget Kinsman, Barstow… San Bernardino.”

“When the kids heard their town name-checked, they went apes***, the screams were deafening,” Spitz says. “Several girls broke for the stage and were dragged away by sheriff’s deputies. Others, in a hysterical swoon, had to be sedated by medical staff.”

‘The Rolling Stones’ by Bob Spitz is out now.