Life | Keith Richards

This episode of Books for Men features Life by Keith Richards. It's an autobiography that reads more like a one-on-one conversation with the legend himself. It's one of the most entertaining books that I've ever read. Listen for more!

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So I alluded to in the last non-fiction episode, so not last week, last week, we featured a fiction book The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The week before that was Love Me Do! by Michael Braun, which was a biography on The Beatles and Beatlemania, which was a very unique book for very specific reasons that I had mentioned in the episode. So if you're curious, go back and listen to it. But at the end of that episode, I alluded to the fact that I read a lot of books on music and musicians and rock memoirs, and rock biographies, and I do. So I wanted to stick with that trend. I thought we would just kind of build off of that for the month of October and for our second non-fiction book this month.

(00:58)

I am featuring Life by Keith Richards, and I shouldn't assume that everyone knows who Keith Richards is. He's the guitarist for The Rolling Stones. He's also the co-songwriter with Mick Jagger on pretty much all of the catalog. He's iconic in a way. There are few people who occupy the space in cultural history that Keith Richards does, and for good reason, because The Rolling Stones like The Beatles had a large impact on the direction of music history, really, and all of the music that came after them, more specifically the style, what rock and roll came to be and what it represented. The Rolling Stones were really the domino that kind of set that into effect, and I can get more into that as this episode goes on. But just circling back to the book, this is an autobiography. So Keith wrote the book, or at least the book is written in Keith's voice, and it's written in conjunction with James Fox, who is a writer for the Sunday Times and who has known Keith for, I don't know, 40-something years.

(02:08)

This book came out in 2010, so I'm assuming longer James isn't credited with the writing of the book except for a little snippet at the end. And when I mean by credit, he's not on the front cover. A lot of celebrity memoirs and celebrity biographies are written in this fashion. They're not writers after all, they're people who do other things, whether they're talking heads or radio personalities or actors or musicians or whatever they are. They're not authors, they're not writers, and a lot of them hire ghostwriters to write their books in their voices. And there's nothing wrong with this. It's just part of the business. It's part of the industry. It's a big sub-industry. A lot of people aren't aware of that, but I do think as a reader or as a well-educated reader, it's worth knowing that ghostwriting exists and that maybe if there's an artist who writes their own, which there are plenty of celebrities who choose to do that as well, maybe it's a tad bit more impressive for you as a reader, or maybe it doesn't matter when it's done well like it is with this book.

(03:12)

You can't even tell the difference. I honestly think that this book feels like you are just having a conversation with Keith Richards. So that's both a testament to James Fox and Keith Richards because it's very unguarded. It's very unbridled, and he shares pretty much everything from when he first picked up music to his thoughts on the guitar, other contemporary great artists, and his relationship with Mick Jagger, which has been tumultuous to a degree. He talks about the day that they met up until the present day, and along with the band, and of course, he has plenty of stone stories as well as stories about his drug-fueled personal life, his battle with drugs, I should say, in romances in his life, and the arrests that pretty much happened all over the place throughout his career. It's just a very, very entertaining book. I mean, I honestly couldn't think of a more entertaining thing to do than have a conversation with Keith Richards for over 500 pages.

(04:13)

Now, The Rolling Stones also happened to be one of my favorite bands of all time, so I'm a little biased in this fashion. But as I alluded to earlier in this episode, there was a time period when rock and roll went in two directions. So I talked about in a previous episode how The Beatles were that moment when you had great artists who were singers, songwriters, and performers who also had an image created around them, and it was something the world has never seen before. Simultaneously, as that was going on, there was this other band that was brewing in England called The Rolling Stones. And the Rolling Stones represented the exact opposite. So The Rolling Stones were singer-songwriters and performers, but they didn't have that image built around them. Instead, they represented what would be an attitude that would carry through rock and roll music for decades to come.

(05:15)

Right? They were basically the domino for sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I will say that you know what it came to be and what it started as are two different things, but they were that seminal band that started that whole thing. Now, shortly after you had Led Zeppelin and you had The Who and Cream and all these other bands that ended up spearheading this rock and roll movement, but really it was The Stones that first exemplified that attitude that came to be associated with that type of rock and roll music. Of course, in the US you had stuff going on in California, which was The Byrds and The Beach Boys, but that was all more like The Beatles. It was more controlled. It was more strictly about the music, not as much about the attitude. Of course, I'm not going to shortchange the musicality of The Rolling Stones and the musical genius of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and Charlie Watts, Bobby Keys and Ron Wood, and everybody who has been associated with The Rolling Stones over the years.

(06:22)

They have a musical catalog that quite simply is unrivaled except by a very, very small number of bands in the history of rock and roll. However, I can't confidently suggest that the style and the attitude that they brought to the music is the thing that reverberated through the entire industry all the way up until today. And what's even more impressive about the Rolling Stones is that they're still going 60 years later. They just did their 60th-anniversary tour, which is pretty freaking remarkable. It's actually insane if you think about it. I mean, when The Rolling Stones first came on the scene, it was in the early sixties or mid-sixties, and the music was closer to World War I than it is to present day. Think about that. So when they first started, they were closer to World War I than they are to present day, and they're still going today.

(07:21)

I saw them last year in Atlanta, and it was like I was watching teenagers up on that stage. I mean, despite the fact that they're almost 80 years old and that when you look at their face, you could tell, but for a distance, you could have no idea. I mean, they sound amazing. The show is amazing. It was quite possibly the best show that I've ever been to, and it's honestly just remarkable that they're able to pack stadiums still to this day, and I'm not talking about with old people, I'm talking about with young people, people of all ages, even that logo, the tongue, it's all over pop culture. It's all over the place. It's all over society. You still see it on t-shirts, young and old. Now, it could be said that a lot of people don't realize that they're even wearing a rolling stone emblem on their chest.

(08:08)

They just think the tongue is cool, but still, it's there and it's relevant, and it's 60 years later. That's just amazing. But there you go. Maybe I just talked myself into a circle and the Stones are really a great example of branding after all, but I think that's more to do with Mick Jagger than it is to do with Keith Richards. And this is a book about Keith Richards. So let's stick to the subject matter. And on that note, you should know that I'm pretty confident when I say there is nobody who has led a more entertaining life than Keith Richards, the subject matter of this book, he starts it off, or in the first 20 pages, there's a quote. He says, “For many years, I slept on average twice a week. This means I have been conscious for at least three lifetimes.” And the funniest part about this quote is that there's like a running joke and there are memes all over the internet of Keith Richards with Adam and Eve and all these different things where it's just signifying.

(09:07)

He's like the man who has never aged or the man who has been around forever. And it's kind of true. He kind of feels like he's just been there, and we take him maybe for granted in a way. But he is a cultural icon in many, many ways, and he's lived an outrageous life. Another part that I found that was hilarious when I read it was when he talked about the power of teenage females. He said, “The power of teenage females of 13, 14, and 15 when they were in a gang has never left me. They nearly killed me. I was never more in fear in my entire life than I was from teenage girls. The ones that choked me, tore me to shreds. If you got caught in a frenzied crowd of them, it's hard to express how frightening they could be. You'd rather be in a trench fighting the enemy than be faced with this unstoppable killer wave of lust and desire, or whatever it is. It's unknown even to them.”

(10:02)

I can't help but laugh as I read this quote. And it's just so funny because you could totally hear Keith Richard saying this in his British accent, and that's pretty much what the whole entire book is like. It's hilarious. It's insightful. I did have one more quote that I had written down here that I wanted to kind of leave you with because it's on a more serious note, and I don't usually share this many quotes cause I feel like sometimes it bogs down the episodes. But this one is one that I think will have a lasting impact because it doesn't just pertain to Keith, even though he is speaking about himself in the quote. I think if you look at it through the right lens, you could see how it could fit any person. And it's just an interesting excerpt from the book.

(10:51)

“I can't untie the threads of how much I played up the part that was written for me. I mean, scouring and broken tooth in the coal, is it half and half? I think in a way, your persona, your image as it used to be known is like a ball and chain. People think I'm still a goddamn junkie. It's been 30 years since I gave up the dope. Your image is like a long shadow. Even when the sun goes down, you could see it. I think some of it is that there is so much pressure to be that person that you become it may be to a certain point that you could bear. It's impossible to not end up being a parody of what you thought you were.”

(11:35)

All right, so this is where I'm going to leave you. This episode is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed it, please, please, please remember to share it with friends, family members, and others that you think might enjoy it. Maybe there are some Rolling Stone fans out there, maybe some Keith Richard fans out there, or maybe just some people who you think would really enjoy this book. I will say it's a lot of fun to read. It's very entertaining. It's totally, totally worth picking it up. I don't know if there's an audiobook. I didn't mention that, but that would also be something to check out, especially if it's read by Keith Richards. I don't know if it is. I'm just throwing it out there. You'd have to check on that. That would be something fun to do all in itself as well. I also wanted to remind you that if you are a consistent listener of the show, it would be awesome if you could rate, review, subscribe, or follow any, or all of the above on your favorite podcast provider because it will help with the initiative, which is the most important thing for me, and that is inspiring more men to read and bringing together men who do. Because if the podcast gets more popular, then the mission gets more popular, and that's really, really important, and that is the main goal here. Lastly, for more information, you could visit BooksforMen.org where you can also sign up for the newsletter, a monthly roundup of all the books and authors that you hear on the podcast.