read by Joe Hurley, Keith Richards, and Johnny Depp
If you’re above a certain age, it may surprise you to learn
that Keith Richards and Mick Jagger aren’t baby boomers. They’re members of the
Silent Generation, by two or three years. But the band they formed, along with
Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, and Ian Stewart is such an intrinsic
part of the baby boom generation that I think we’ve got to give them honorary
membership. To this day, if you want a lively debate among Boomers (not to
mention a significant portion of Genexers), all you’ve got to say is three
words: “Beatles or Stones?”
And Keith Richards’ autobiography is necessarily a biography
of the Rolling Stones—from his point of view, of course. And it turns out that
he is disarmingly charming. James Fox captured his voice, first
over hundreds of hours of interviews, then in writing—and he did a fantastic
job. If you listen to the audiobook, Johnny Depp does some of the narration
(mostly in the first few chapters and then again for a bit near the end) but
Keith does quite a lot of it himself, and it’s wonderful to hear his stories.
For me the most fascinating part was how the band got
together, and then their early days—both before they became famous and then
after they really caught on. There was a certain early-to-mid-career part,
where the sex and drugs were very present but not yet all-consuming, where
Keith was fascinated with learning and perfecting his five-string open tuning,
and when the relationship with Anita Pallenberg was first occurring and then
was at its best, that feels to me like a golden age—if not in Keith’s life,
then in the course of the book.
But his recounting of how heroin took over his life, and
heroin and paranoia took over Anita’s, and all the difficulties with parenting
and with the deterioration of the friendship between Keith and Mick, is also
deeply interesting. All of that went into making Keith the person he is at the
end of the book, too—that, and the various deaths in his circle of family and
friends and co-famous-people, and new relationships we don’t get to hear so
much about anymore.
It’s not possible for me to listen to the Rolling Stones
with new ears. I’m too familiar with their canon up to about Tattoo You, and I
don’t care enough about anything they produced after that. But after listening
to this book, and stopping frequently to listen to the song being discussed, I
can say I have listened to their work with, at least, new appreciation. For the
history of each track, of course, but also for the artistry that went into so
much deceptive simplicity. And there was definitely artistry—technique and
concept both. Keith geeks out about all this in several places, and I found it
oddly charming.
In the end I can say that Keith Richards is a man of depth
and complexity who follows all of his passions well beyond the dictates of
common sense—which is the reason for his genius as well as numerous brushes
with the law and with death. In short, he lives up to his reputation.
Which is not to say that all of the rumors are true;
according to him, at least, some are and some aren’t. And the truth behind at
least one major one will remain forever a mystery if he has his say. No, I
won’t tell you which is which. Read the book! Go on, I dare you.
