Life
Ratings40
Average rating3.8
I'm not even much of a Rolling Stones Fan, yet this was a consistently interesting read (or listen in my case as I went for the audio book) his recollection of facts sometimes stretches credulity but the anecdotes are thick, the periods fascinating. Go in with low expectations and be positively surised.
I enjoyed this tome of a biography, one of the longer books I have read in a while.
Richards shares all the details of his life, in what reads as an unguarded display of the trials and tribulations of his life. His childhood, his love life and his family life, as well as a details analysis of everything the Rolling Stones have produced.
To be honest I haven't realised that Keith Richards was such a technical guitar player - a great deal of detail in this book is about his guitar technique - both his and that of others. The details of this all washed over me, of course, but it was interesting to understand how influential his adoption of removing the bottom string (ie playing a five string guitar rather than a six string) and open G tuning, which means cover bands using conventional guitar tuning really struggle to reproduce a lot of the songs.
Richards also shares a similar amount of detail about the plethora of musicians he worked with over the many decades of his career, sharing loads of anecdotes and stories along the way. It is pretty obvious throughout the book that Richards is really interested and driven by music, and music is not a means to an end for him. Fame and money are the bi-products of his music.
Drugs also played a large part in Richard's life. There is no doubt it is glamorised here, but at least for the most part Keith ‘manages' his drug taking. Like his guitar playing he takes a technical approach to his drugs. The balance of the ups and downs generated by his drugs which allowed him, for the most part, to be a productive and active participant in life while on drugs (a high-functioning drug user), as opposed to getting out of it and locking himself away from life. He also considered he had clear boundaries and understood (some of) his own limitations and considered himself unlikely to overdoes due to those. It isn't all glamour however, and his frequent cleaning up (going cold turkey) to go on tour sounds unbearable. Similarly, if all accurate, the inability of partner Anita Pallenberg to control her own drug taking.
The fascination that the police in the USA and UK had with the Stones, and trying to bust them was crazy too. The elaborate sting operations, the surveillance, the bad decisions the police made in court - all of which resulted in making them look incredibly incompetent, made for amusing reading.
Towards the end of the book, where he begins to battle more with Mick Jagger, the books takes a more one sided approach (I guess we expect to hear only Keith's side, to be fair), although if events and discussions are all as stated, it seems Keith may be right with his diagnosis of Micks case of LVS (Lead Vocalist Syndrome).
Probably the only negative aspect of this book for me was Keith's regular reference to women as bitches - he doesn't even seem to associate the term negatively, just in general, which seemed to be petty, when he could have just as easily replaced them all with the term girls.
I am a fan of the Stone - I have about 2/3 of their albums, but I wouldn't say I am a a mad fan. I still got way more out of this book than I expected, and I am grateful to Petra's review which led me to buy a copy.
5 stars.
Heartily recommend! It was touching, funny, insightful...
I love the way he talks about people, even people he dislikes.
Be sure to read all the way to the end of this fairly long book so as not to miss the part where Richards tells how he snorted some of his father's ashes after they spilled on a table.