Life with Keith

I was more a Beatles fan than Rolling Stones, but Keith Richards autobiography Life is well worth the read--just for the documenting of an era and for a lot of laughs, although after a while you question if you should really be chuckling. Spoiler Alert!

For example:
1. If you were on a trip to Morocco and suddenly your friend and fellow band member got sick and had to be hospitalized in southern France, what would you do?
A. Hang out in the south of France (hey it's pretty nice) and wait for the friend to recover.
B  Continue on to Morocco and sleep with your friend's girlfriend.

2. The friend is released from the hospital and you fly back to help him, but he's still a little shaky and weak for a plane flight. Do you:
A. Delay the flight. Let him rest a few days more days in the south of France (it's still pretty nice)
B. Give him a tab of acid to ease those jitters and boost his strength to get right on the plane.

3. Your girlfriend and mother of your children is spiralling downhill with drug addiction. You have a nasty habit yourself. What would you do with your seven year old son:
A. Send him to granny's
B. Take him on tour with you.

4. You open the urn that contains your father's ashes and some inadvertently spills out. Do you:
A. Brush the ashes into your cupped hand at the edge of the table and return them to the urn.
B.  Snort the ashes.

5. A policeman knocks on the door and you're still a bit high after a night of partying. You
A. Welcome him and his fellow officers in, wondering who these blue smurf-like characters are.
B. Slam the door, call your attorney and dispose of the illegal drugs.

7.  You're on a road trip from Memphis to Texas via Arkansas and you stop at a local cafe.
A. You leave the drugs in your car
B. You bring the drugs into the cafe with you because you need a quick hit in the bathroom.

8. You're meeting your new girlfriend's parents for the first time and you want to impress them.
A. You dress up nicely, show up on time and politely compliment the mother's cooking.
B. You show up drunk, bring a rude friend along for moral support and pick a fight with your girlfriend's brothers.

Well, no real surpises there. I expected the bad boy of rock to have many tales of selfish, drug infused behavior and part of the fun of the book is the voyeuristic view of the dark, glamorous life of drugs, sex and rock and roll. "Would you let your daughter date a Rolling Stone?" was their first brilliant marketing ploy, differentiating them from the relatively clean cut, more acceptable Beatles.

What was cool was the inside story: not just the partying, but how they started out, their vision as being the number one blues band of England, their evolution, how they began writing their own songs, the fights betwee Mick and Keith, the turnovers in the band, the story of how they could still be rocking after all these years.  You take Keith's side in the feud with Jagger who suffered from LSA-- lead singer addiction, a sometimes fatal flaw of egotism, possessiveness  and opportunism. Along the way, you begin to see the positive, softer side of Keith--his passion for the music, his sense of loyalty and his random acts of kindness. For example, in 1981, the now clean Keith backs Ronnie Woods for the tour, although Ron is struggling with alcoholism and Mick wants to drop him.

Amazingly his son Marlon (who survived the tours and a childhood of benign(?) neglect ) and daughter named Dandelion Angela (raised by Keith's mother) seem to have turned out ok, as far as celebrity children go. Keith has been happily married to former model Patti Hansen for 27 years, and maintains an amicable relationsip with long time girlflriend Anita Pallenberg. For years he was picked as the rock star most likely to die and yet he survived and has been heroin free for 30 years and cocaine free since 2006.

I  listened to all 20 cds of the book and loved the voices of readers Johnny Dep and Joe Hurley. Whoever did Keith's voice was larger than life, accenting each word with a rhythm and emphasis that stuck in your brain. Anita was A-NIH-ta. Marlon was MARRRR-lon.  I was actualy disappointed when Keith's own gravelly voice kicks in on the last few cds.  Gone was the actor's drama, which was a perfect match for the drama and excesses of the story.

I am going back to listen to the songs, now that I know more about the riffs, the origin of the lyrics, the open G string tuning (could someone explain that to me again?), the sound effects.  My favorite story about song writing---Satisfaction wrote itself! Keith had been talking to Mick about ideas for the song and woke up next morning, played back the tape that he always kept next to his bed and there was the genesis of the song. 

I've already got my dictating machine set up. Who knows?