LIFE IS GREAT
I found Keith Richards “Life” a fucking entertaining read. Mr. Richards turned 67 in December and says he’ll keep on making music ‘till he croaks. This arch-survivor of all kinds of excesses for many years ranked number one on the list of those rock starts most likely to die of some or other substance abuse finally released his autobiography. He’s still going strong and is sort of disappointed that his dropped off this death list
“Life “ is more of a memoir than an autobiography - it’s a long conversation with a couple of bottles of Jack Daniels to ease the wheels in a smoky room draped with skull-embroidered cloth and bathed in subdued red-tinted light.
It will be impossible to write a definitive biography about the Rolling Stones and the songwriting team of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, “The Glimmer Twins”, as their careers spans nearly half a century. Their story weaves in and out of modern history. From “Satisfaction” as a symbol to the Free Love generation, the happenings at Altamont in 1969, “Paint it Black” as one of the defining anthems of the Vietnam War to Microsoft using “Start Me Up” to launch Windows 95 that was incidentally the first time a Stones song was used in an advertising campaign.
“Life” is about of an unassuming man propelled into super-stardom at the age of twenty which trapped him into the gilded cage of fame and fortune for the next four and a half decades. A rock ‘n roll lifestyle where there are no limits on what you can or can’t do. An autonomous “Pirate State” he calls it. Richards ain’t complaining and enjoys every minute of it. But it’s also a deeply human story of a dedicated musical genius who will work for up to nine days without sleep (so he says) to hone a song to perfection.
Being a child of the fifties the Rolling Stones features heavily in the soundtrack of my life as I cut my musical teeth on their songs. As a rebel that started drinking and smoking at the age of 15, both vices I’ve left behind long-long ago, I could identify more with their music than the poppy Beatles with their clean-cut life style. As a wannabe guitar player I had many Stones songs in my repertoire trying to woo the many loves of my life unsuccessfully with song like “As Tears Go By” and “Angie”
I own every single Stones album but none of the Beatles.
Therefore I’m much prejudiced when I read Richard Poplak’s review of “Life” in The Daily Maverick recently commenting on Keith Richards that - “…we also know that his artistry, along with that of his bandmates, curdled thirty years ago, and he now peddles a shiny form of Nostalgia Inc. that generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year.” It spoils a good review as there are no other band that still plays to sell-out crowds each time they appear more than forty years on.
The Stones “Bigger Bang” tour, for instance, raked in $558-million making it the highest grossing rock tour in history. The highlight of the tour was on February 18, 2006 when the Stones played a one-night concert on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. The free concert was broadcast on television and broke several records as the largest rock concert of all time. There were a reported 2 million people on the beach and surrounds and a special bridge was constructed for the band to cross from the stage to the hotel safely. This won’t be possible for a bunch of geriatrics that thrives on nostalgia alone.
I’m not attempting to write a review of the book, which because of its very nature will mean different things to different people, depending on how much the story of The ‘Stones features in their own life’s experiences. I found out a lot about Keef, Brenda and the drumming genius of Charlie Watts.
I did not know, for instance, that the copyright of all Stones songs recorded before 1971 belongs to their erstwhile manager, and recently deceased, Allen Klein and his heirs. I cannot imagine how Keith must feel about the fact that a song like “Satisfaction” belongs to someone else and that he’s only entitled to royalties. On the other hand I suppose it might not matter as he says he wrote that famous riff in his sleep,
Songwriting, in my opinion, is a mysterious art - how can you grasp a melody out of thin air, add the correct instruments, cords and lyrics which turns a feeling into reality and into a song that will be instantly recognizable to millions for decades?
Keith describes it as follows;
“What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about touching the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.”
“Love has sold more songs than you’ve had hot dinners. Though it depends if people know what love is. It’s such a common subject. Can you come up with a new twist, a new expression of it? If you work at it, it’s contrived. It can only come from the heart. And ten other people will say, is that about her? Is it about me? Yeah, there’s a little bit about you, the second bit of the last verse. Mostly it’s about imagery loves, a compilation of women you’ve known.”
You offer me
All your love and sympathy
Sweet affection, baby
It’s killing me
“I always thought that’s what songs are really about; you’re not supposed to sing songs about hiding things. And when my voice got better and stronger, I was able to communicate that raw feeling, so I wrote more tender songs, love songs, if you like. Composing a song like that, in front of a mike, is holding on to a friend in some way”
Explaining the composing of “Thief in the Night” (On the Bridges to Babylon album) Keith says -
“I got the title from the Bible, which I read quite often; some very good phrases in there.” Goodness greatness.
Only being a very bad amateur guitar player I did not even know that a lot of Keith Richards’s distinctive sound is attributable to the fact that he uses five string open tuning, which I surmise can only work if you have thousand guitars at your disposal with Pierre de Beauport, a full time guitar technician, to look after your instruments.
Richards on five string open tuning -
“Obviously doing that simplifies the sound, in that you’re limiting yourself to a set thing. But if you find the right one, like 'Start Me Up' it creates the song. I’ve heard millions of bands try and play “Start Me Up” with regular tuning. It just won’t work pal."
Tom Waits on Keefs guitar playing;
“He’s like a common labourer in a lot of ways. He’s like a swabby. Like a sailor. I found some things they say about music that seemed to apply to Keith. You know, in the old days they said the sound of the guitar could cure gout and epilepsy, sciatica and migraines. I think nowadays there seems to be a deficit of wonder. And Keith still seems to wonder about this stuff. He will stop and hold his guitar up and just stare at it for a while. Just be rather mystified by it. Like all the great things in the world, women and religion and the sky…you wonder about it, and you don’t stop wondering about it.”
The other snippet of Stones lore I learnt is that the hugely successful Voodoo Lounge album and tour was named after a stray kitten, named Voodoo that Richards rescued from a storm water drain one rainy night in Barbados.
He had a menagerie of animals through the years - from a wolfhound called Syphilis (oh dear me) to a mutt named Raz, short for Rasputin, who was rescued from between the garbage cans of the Dynamo Stadium in Moscow where the ‘Stones was playing a concert. Keith adopted Raz who now “lives as czar of Connecticut’, where he co-exists with Pumpkin (a golden Labrador), the cat, Toaster, and the French Bulldogs, Etta and Sugar.
“When the dogs and I are alone, I talk endlessly. They’re great listeners,” Keith says.
Richards also kept a Mynah bird as a pet once but it wasn’t a pleasant experience;
“When I put music on, it would start yelling at me. It was like living with an ancient, fractious aunt. The fucker was never grateful for anything. Only animal I ever gave away. Maybe it got too stoned; there were a lot of guys smoking weed. To me it was like living with Mick in a cage, always pursing its beak. I have a poor record with caged birds. I accidently disposed of Ronnie’s parakeet. I thought it was a toy alarm clock that had gone wrong. It was hanging in a cage at the end of his house and the fucking thing just sat there and didn’t react to anything, except to make this repetitive squawk. So I got rid of it. Too late I realized my mistake. ‘Thanks Christ for that’ was Ronnie’s reaction. He hated that bird.”
Because of the rigours of touring Keith has quite solitary eating habits at odd hours and he prefers basic “English Nosh” and there’s the famous story about his shepherd’s pie that absolutely no-one is allowed to touch until he has broken the crust, it’s even written into his touring contact.
“Life” even includes a recipe for Bangers and Mash, the Keef Richards way -
“Life” is great.
Try it, you might like it.
Both the book and the real thing,
Best wishes for 2011 may your life be great and bountiful.
May all your dreams and wishes become true in this New Year.
“Life “ is more of a memoir than an autobiography - it’s a long conversation with a couple of bottles of Jack Daniels to ease the wheels in a smoky room draped with skull-embroidered cloth and bathed in subdued red-tinted light.
It will be impossible to write a definitive biography about the Rolling Stones and the songwriting team of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, “The Glimmer Twins”, as their careers spans nearly half a century. Their story weaves in and out of modern history. From “Satisfaction” as a symbol to the Free Love generation, the happenings at Altamont in 1969, “Paint it Black” as one of the defining anthems of the Vietnam War to Microsoft using “Start Me Up” to launch Windows 95 that was incidentally the first time a Stones song was used in an advertising campaign.
“Life” is about of an unassuming man propelled into super-stardom at the age of twenty which trapped him into the gilded cage of fame and fortune for the next four and a half decades. A rock ‘n roll lifestyle where there are no limits on what you can or can’t do. An autonomous “Pirate State” he calls it. Richards ain’t complaining and enjoys every minute of it. But it’s also a deeply human story of a dedicated musical genius who will work for up to nine days without sleep (so he says) to hone a song to perfection.
Being a child of the fifties the Rolling Stones features heavily in the soundtrack of my life as I cut my musical teeth on their songs. As a rebel that started drinking and smoking at the age of 15, both vices I’ve left behind long-long ago, I could identify more with their music than the poppy Beatles with their clean-cut life style. As a wannabe guitar player I had many Stones songs in my repertoire trying to woo the many loves of my life unsuccessfully with song like “As Tears Go By” and “Angie”
I own every single Stones album but none of the Beatles.
Therefore I’m much prejudiced when I read Richard Poplak’s review of “Life” in The Daily Maverick recently commenting on Keith Richards that - “…we also know that his artistry, along with that of his bandmates, curdled thirty years ago, and he now peddles a shiny form of Nostalgia Inc. that generates hundreds of millions of dollars a year.” It spoils a good review as there are no other band that still plays to sell-out crowds each time they appear more than forty years on.
The Stones “Bigger Bang” tour, for instance, raked in $558-million making it the highest grossing rock tour in history. The highlight of the tour was on February 18, 2006 when the Stones played a one-night concert on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. The free concert was broadcast on television and broke several records as the largest rock concert of all time. There were a reported 2 million people on the beach and surrounds and a special bridge was constructed for the band to cross from the stage to the hotel safely. This won’t be possible for a bunch of geriatrics that thrives on nostalgia alone.
I’m not attempting to write a review of the book, which because of its very nature will mean different things to different people, depending on how much the story of The ‘Stones features in their own life’s experiences. I found out a lot about Keef, Brenda and the drumming genius of Charlie Watts.
I did not know, for instance, that the copyright of all Stones songs recorded before 1971 belongs to their erstwhile manager, and recently deceased, Allen Klein and his heirs. I cannot imagine how Keith must feel about the fact that a song like “Satisfaction” belongs to someone else and that he’s only entitled to royalties. On the other hand I suppose it might not matter as he says he wrote that famous riff in his sleep,
Songwriting, in my opinion, is a mysterious art - how can you grasp a melody out of thin air, add the correct instruments, cords and lyrics which turns a feeling into reality and into a song that will be instantly recognizable to millions for decades?
Keith describes it as follows;
“What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about touching the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.”
“Love has sold more songs than you’ve had hot dinners. Though it depends if people know what love is. It’s such a common subject. Can you come up with a new twist, a new expression of it? If you work at it, it’s contrived. It can only come from the heart. And ten other people will say, is that about her? Is it about me? Yeah, there’s a little bit about you, the second bit of the last verse. Mostly it’s about imagery loves, a compilation of women you’ve known.”
You offer me
All your love and sympathy
Sweet affection, baby
It’s killing me
“I always thought that’s what songs are really about; you’re not supposed to sing songs about hiding things. And when my voice got better and stronger, I was able to communicate that raw feeling, so I wrote more tender songs, love songs, if you like. Composing a song like that, in front of a mike, is holding on to a friend in some way”
Explaining the composing of “Thief in the Night” (On the Bridges to Babylon album) Keith says -
“I got the title from the Bible, which I read quite often; some very good phrases in there.” Goodness greatness.
Only being a very bad amateur guitar player I did not even know that a lot of Keith Richards’s distinctive sound is attributable to the fact that he uses five string open tuning, which I surmise can only work if you have thousand guitars at your disposal with Pierre de Beauport, a full time guitar technician, to look after your instruments.
Richards on five string open tuning -
“Obviously doing that simplifies the sound, in that you’re limiting yourself to a set thing. But if you find the right one, like 'Start Me Up' it creates the song. I’ve heard millions of bands try and play “Start Me Up” with regular tuning. It just won’t work pal."
Tom Waits on Keefs guitar playing;
“He’s like a common labourer in a lot of ways. He’s like a swabby. Like a sailor. I found some things they say about music that seemed to apply to Keith. You know, in the old days they said the sound of the guitar could cure gout and epilepsy, sciatica and migraines. I think nowadays there seems to be a deficit of wonder. And Keith still seems to wonder about this stuff. He will stop and hold his guitar up and just stare at it for a while. Just be rather mystified by it. Like all the great things in the world, women and religion and the sky…you wonder about it, and you don’t stop wondering about it.”
The other snippet of Stones lore I learnt is that the hugely successful Voodoo Lounge album and tour was named after a stray kitten, named Voodoo that Richards rescued from a storm water drain one rainy night in Barbados.
He had a menagerie of animals through the years - from a wolfhound called Syphilis (oh dear me) to a mutt named Raz, short for Rasputin, who was rescued from between the garbage cans of the Dynamo Stadium in Moscow where the ‘Stones was playing a concert. Keith adopted Raz who now “lives as czar of Connecticut’, where he co-exists with Pumpkin (a golden Labrador), the cat, Toaster, and the French Bulldogs, Etta and Sugar.
“When the dogs and I are alone, I talk endlessly. They’re great listeners,” Keith says.
Richards also kept a Mynah bird as a pet once but it wasn’t a pleasant experience;
“When I put music on, it would start yelling at me. It was like living with an ancient, fractious aunt. The fucker was never grateful for anything. Only animal I ever gave away. Maybe it got too stoned; there were a lot of guys smoking weed. To me it was like living with Mick in a cage, always pursing its beak. I have a poor record with caged birds. I accidently disposed of Ronnie’s parakeet. I thought it was a toy alarm clock that had gone wrong. It was hanging in a cage at the end of his house and the fucking thing just sat there and didn’t react to anything, except to make this repetitive squawk. So I got rid of it. Too late I realized my mistake. ‘Thanks Christ for that’ was Ronnie’s reaction. He hated that bird.”
Because of the rigours of touring Keith has quite solitary eating habits at odd hours and he prefers basic “English Nosh” and there’s the famous story about his shepherd’s pie that absolutely no-one is allowed to touch until he has broken the crust, it’s even written into his touring contact.
“Life” even includes a recipe for Bangers and Mash, the Keef Richards way -
- First off, find a butcher who makes his sausages fresh
- Fry up a mixture of onions and bacon and seasoning
- Get the spuds on the boil with a dash of vinegar, some chopped onions and salt (seasoning to taste). Chuck in some peas with the spuds. (Throw in some carrots if you like.) Now we’re talking.
- Now, you have a choice of grilling or broiling your bangers or frying. Throw them on low heat with the simmering bacon and onions and let the fuckers rock gently, turning every few minutes,
- Mash yer spuds and whatever.
- Bangers are now fat free (as possible!)
- Gravy if desired
- HP sauce, every man to his own
“Life” is great.
Try it, you might like it.
Both the book and the real thing,
Best wishes for 2011 may your life be great and bountiful.
May all your dreams and wishes become true in this New Year.