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?

Never too old to head bang

Last night I checked another item off my bucket list and, until I met my new son-in-law, would never have had it on my list at all. The item: attend Heavy Metal Band Concert.  Perhaps "attend" is the wrong word--too sedate when you consider that the sound blasts your eardrums (thank goodness for earplugs), vibrates your sternum and "melts your face." That last cool quote from Dave himself. 


It was a lot of fun, kind of like Halloween. We picked out our outfits to 'blend in" with the crowd, but were a bit shy on tatoos, piercings and accessory chains and at least 30 years too old.  Next time we'll know better.  Here we are -- oh so heavy.

Right on!

Sporting Deathalizer tees

Smoke machine added the hazy look

                                            

Bonus between bands: go-go girls!

Deathalizer, the band

Heart doctor by day--death doctor by night

Quotes:


Me to Emmanuel, the lead singer: Don't worry about us. You can drop as many F*bombs as you need to... (and he needed to drop a lot) 


Me to Gary: This is the kind of venue you read about in the newspaper ..you know...there's a fire and everyone gets crushed rushing to the narrow stairway.


Me to Scott at 2 AM: I can't believe all the people on the street---look  at these crowds--it's crazy.
Scott:  Hey, Dorothy, are you from Kansas? This is called city nightlife. 


Gary to me: I can't remember when the last time we stayed out until 3 AM.
Me: maybe never?

Insomnia

One of the minor annoyances of chemotherapy (or maybe it's just a consequence of my age) is that I have bouts of insomnia. No rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes I just get into a bad pattern that involves tossing and turning, rearranging pillows, roaming the house at 2 am, switching bedrooms, trying out the couch downstairs, reading, watching movies, drinking warm milk, or practicing yoga breathing, before I finally drift back to sleep.  Then I sleep later in the morning, shift all meals 2 or 3 hours later, go to bed at midnight because I'm not tired and repeat the whole process.  The bedtimes get later and later, so you can see the result is akin to being a college kid and subbing day for night or being a world traveler, unsure of what time zone you're really in. Three o'clock--must be lunch time!  Six o'clock--nap before dinner!

After a week or so of this nonsense, I return to a more normal sleep schedule, highlighted by a marathon 12 hour sleep to start, just to reset the internal body clock.

What's strange is that I miss my crazy nights sometimes.  There's something about creeping around your house at 3 am that gives you a sense of peace and well being. I've been playing with a new toy that Gary got for Christmas--binoculars with a camera inside. The moon has just been so bright the last few nights, that I've been looking out my window in the wee hours and clicking away. The only problem is I'm so used to digital previewing that it's weird to have to wait until you download the pictures to your computer to see if any came out. (and I do wait for daylight to do that).  I overestimated how much light the moon was actually shedding on objects below, so got a set of very black photos the other night. Here's the best of the batch:

Moon peeking through the tree branches

Oh, yeah, and I know, before anyone states the obvious, that the key to returning to sleep is to NOT engage in any activities that will stimulate the brain and wake you up more.  Seems like running from one window to another is not exactly a soothing, back to sleep ritual.

My ritual when I was a little kid was to listen to the same record every night.  For some reason, the record player, which was a sizeable piece of furniture--mahogany cabinet with a heavy, polished lid--was in my room.  I don't remember all the songs that were on that 78--maybe because I always fell asleep before the record ended-- but I'm pretty sure  these catchy tunes were included :

(have a listen, courtesy of You Tube)

Mr. Sandman 

Buttons and Bows

They're very upbeat for bedtime lullabies, but obviously my parents were on to something because it worked for me then and I'm wondering if the Chordettes and Dinah Shore will work the magic for me now.  May just have to try that out.

A little bit of country

Hey y'all:

Today is my brother Chuck's birthday, so I'm sending him a Country shout-out.  Born under the Aquarius sign, apparently he had Country in his heart right from the beginning and has morphed into a big fan, bringing some of us along for the ride. Yes, I attended the Brooks & Dunn farewell tour last summer and really enjoyed it-- a lot of crossover between rock and pop and country. Of course, the show wouldn't have been complete without the requisite patriotic song and marching Marines (or rent-a-marines)--way too hokey for a cynical child of the 60's like me. The best part of country is that they sure know how to tell a story and play the fiddle.

.

Even Gary has gone a little country, playing a Hank Williams CD the other night, whiney guitar and all...Hey, good lookin', what'cha got cookin'...  It's all part of his fascination with early rock and roll and that trip to Memphis. Maybe Nashville, next time?

So, dear brother, not many cowboys up there in the Bronx, but this song's for you: (and to think you were born in a smoky, river town....)  Happy Birthday!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzldLJcorbo

I get the urge for going...

Saw and spoke to Tom Rush in concert last night at Bergen Community College.  He's an old 60's folkie who introduced many of Joni Mitchell's songs and had a profound influence on James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Garth Brooks among others. I first saw him at Cornell back in 1969 or 70. (He loved being reminded of how long he's been playing and how old he is. ha!)

Just have to share the lyrics to the song, "I get the urge to going," which is so poetic and appropriate for this time of year:

And I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky and gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
And shivering trees are standing in a naked row
I get the urge for going but I never seem to go
And I get the urge for going when the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down winter's closing in...

Beautiful, huh? ... and when we're really facing winter, here's the last verse:

I'll ply the fire with kindling and pull the blankets to my chin
And I'll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in
I'd like to call back summertime and have her stay just another month or so
She's got the urge for going and I guess she'll have to go


The song was written by Joni Mitchell and picked up by WBZ in Boston, where it was a "turntable hit" and got considerable play time before it was finally released as a single.

Here's a you-tube version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Wq6_uL6AiY&feature=related

Here's Tom Rush website: http://tomrush.com/