Adam Hay-Nicholls has a habit of following the Rolling Stones around the world—albeit several decades behind them. He has retraced the band’s 1967 road trip through Morocco, and, this summer, the London-based writer and Formula One correspondent headed to Jamaica, where the Stones recorded Goats Head Soup in 1972. Starting in Kingston, Hay-Nicholls made his way along the north coast in search of the studios, hotels, record shops, and hideaways that have kept Mick Jagger and Keith Richards coming back for more than half a century.
If you’re going to write rock ’n’ roll history, choosing the location is important. The walls, the vista, the local firewater, even the pharmaceuticals can seep into the music and the artists’ mythology. Bowie had Berlin. Crosby, Stills Nash & Young had Laurel Canyon. The Rolling Stones had Jamaica, but only because nowhere else would take them.