Keef, Ye Always Been Me Rolling Stones Fave

Life, in memoir, maybe. Alive, as a grandpa, in 2011, not a great bet. At least, that is the way this musical superstar’s life was portrayed in the media. The world always knew Keith Richards had an interesting life, but did we think he’d be alive at 67? Certainly, his stats do not come close to the entry requirements of the ’27’club. Or, the new ’47 club recently established by Jani Lane of Warrant. No overdose reports, no rehab stays, nothing to show but a body and soul, that drunk, stoned or straight has not stopped playing music since a young tot.

By his own admission, once the ‘bad boy’ persona got rolling around the world, he gave into it and fed the reporters, photographers, and fans what they wanted to believe. He is, actually, quite a humble chap. Never one for the groupies, and for the most part, romantically involved in longstanding, monogamous relationships with women he truly loved, he left those shenanigans to the man, whose gyrating rear end he has stood behind for almost 50 years, Mick Jagger. He does clear up some myths, such as having his blood transfused or snorting his father’s cremated ashes, but explains many of the addiction issues, surrounding the late sixties and the next 10 years to follow, as his truth. His drug use had devastating effects on his relationship with Mick to be sure.

But while he makes it clear he is not promoting his substance-filled lifestyle, he makes no apologies as well citing the purity of the drugs and methods of intake during his addicted years were quite different than popular drug culture, today. He admits that close calls he had in respect to his drug use came from using street dope on the rare occasions that his supply from drug companies was interrupted or unavailable. He believes that he has been given way more than nine lives, now into his seventh decade, but if exposed to the substances that celebrities have been inundated with in the past twenty years, he would never have survived.

His admiration and passion for pure rhythm and blues and America’s black musicians, from his coveted early 50’s discs including those by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters through to today’s jams with soul musicians including his own non-Stones incarnations as the X-pensive Winos and collaborations with many artists native to the Caribbean, is conveyed with heavy hand. His lift of their styles, rifts, in combination with his description of the influence their music had on his unique chords, instrument tweaking, and his creation of never before recorded production methods in studio shacks in the backwoods of the southern U.S. to large, multi-track, state of the art facilities makes the book part guitar ‘fanzine’ and part history of the stringed instrument. His first taste of the string was an old guitar, seemingly forever out of his grasp in his Dartford, England home, where, when he was tall enough to reach it, his grandfather taught him to play “Malaguena,” with the advice that if he could learn to play that Spanish song, he would be able to play anything he wished when his fingers touched strings.

The history of the Rolling Stones, well-documented in hundreds of books, articles, film as well as their recordings, Richards touches briefly on the comings and goings of band members and other Stones personnel, primarily as they connected to him, personally. He burrows a bit deeper into explaining his complex relationship with Jagger comparing it more as the love of brothers than of good friends.

His parlay into his romantic relationships, family, and non-music business world, such as recent health scares, ties the book together, nicely, as the book is not called “Career” but “Life.”


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