{"id":3973,"date":"2010-11-10T16:52:48","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T20:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=3973"},"modified":"2010-11-11T14:43:08","modified_gmt":"2010-11-11T18:43:08","slug":"keef%e2%80%99s-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/keef%e2%80%99s-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Keef\u2019s Life<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
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That's life!<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, as I set Keith Richards<\/strong>‘ memoir, Life<\/em>, cowritten by novelist and friend James Fox<\/strong>, on my nightstand each night\u00a0after an hour’s worth of reading I couldn’t help but reflect on the back-cover photograph of a gleefully shambolic Keef, in a pose very similar to the one atop this post. “It must be nice to see yourself in this way,” I thought, “and think, Yeah, that’s the shot for the back cover of my memoir!<\/em>”<\/p>\n

This is probably why I can’t stand having my picture taken. I’m nowhere near as comfortable in my skin as Keef is in his. His comfort with himself also comes out in the writing of this book, which is laid back, down to earth, sometimes rambling, a bit self-satisfied, and surprisingly sweet. Who would have thought Keef was so into cuddling<\/em>? There’s a brief bit in which he discusses all the women of Mick Jagger<\/strong> who inevitably end up crying on his shoulder. He tops it off with something to the effect of, “No one thinks of me as ‘Uncle Keith,’ but that’s a side of me.”<\/p>\n

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That's life!<\/p><\/div>\n

You know how in classic interviews through the years Keef could drop a spade<\/em> here and a pouff<\/em> there and seem utterly innocent and charming in dropping these slurs? That remarkable tone runs throughout Life<\/em>. There’s no difference between his detailing his don’t-try-this-at-home, kids-but-if-must…<\/em> advice on maintaining a heroin habit and his recipe for bangers and mash. His eye-of-the-storm account of the life of the most outrageous of Rolling Stones is both admirable and, occasionally tedious. How many tales of lovable-but-out-of-control Bobby Keys<\/strong> can one Stones fan take? So many of these passages remind me of William Burroughs<\/strong>‘ similarly fascinating autobiographical novel Junkie<\/em>, in which the underlying message is CONTROL, as in the ability to keep one’s shit together. (The most tediously Burroughsian sections of the book involve his supposed expertise in handling knives, “shooters” [as he calls guns], machetes, and other weaponry. Give me a break!)<\/p>\n

I kept wishing for instances in which Keef would lose it a bit, in which he would reveal more than he was expecting. He barely brings his band mates to light, occasionally telling<\/em> us about a particular character flaw or strength but rarely if ever actually showing<\/em> us who these people are and what makes them tick. The same goes for his platitudes on his longest-running mate, junkie extraordinaire Anita Pallenberg<\/strong>. Who is this woman? What did she actually bring to this guy’s life other than the ability to feel that he had his shit way more together than she did? At times like these I thought to myself, Who needs Keith Richards to do some Dr. Phil rap?<\/em> Or maybe it’s some kind of British reserve that I can’t get through? Who needs Keith Richards to describe Charlie Watts<\/strong> in ways befitting David Niven on Laurence Olivier?<\/em><\/p>\n

One of the few times that Richards tells me something I’m not expected to know is when he relates the friendly ribbing he and his Stones mates used to give The Beatles<\/strong> for wearing their guitars too high. They tell John, Paul, and George that they’d be able to play better if they’d wear their guitars lower. That paragraph was a funny, unexpected anecdote that refused to play into all the Spanish Tony\/Gram Parsons<\/strong> nonsense. Keef, by the way, was way more in control of his shit than those two not to mention, we’re told a couple of times, John Lennon himself, who we’re told never left Keef’s place in a vertical position. Heh heh…<\/em><\/p>\n

I wish there was more on the creation of the music. I wish there was more than a couple of pages on the breakthroughs he discovered in the playing of blues guitarists and other contemporaries in the early ’60s. By the time the band moves past the half-hearted Their Satanic Majesties Request<\/em> Keef frequently gives little more than mumbled references to “guitar weaving” and other forms of musical alchemy, with that spades<\/em> and pouffs<\/em> sense of wonderment and mild dismissal.<\/p>\n

There’s much to recommend this book and Keef’s take on his life, but I wish it accomplished what so few Stones histories have ever done, that is, create a sense of the creative<\/em> magic of the band and the band members. For a band that’s made such powerful, lively music, tales surrounding the band are ultimately depressing or, if one finds it romantic, debauched. I shouldn’t hold out hope, but I think of all the crystal-clear creative moments that make up the Beatles’ legacy and wish someone would capture a fraction of the magic that make up the creative legacy of the Stones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, as I set Keith Richards‘ memoir, Life, cowritten by novelist and friend James Fox, on my nightstand each night\u00a0after an hour’s worth of reading I couldn’t help but reflect on the back-cover photograph of a gleefully shambolic Keef, in a pose very similar to the one atop this post. “It must be nice […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[167,65,45],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3973\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}