What I’m Reading: Keith Richards

Life by Keith Richards

Two Stars

My general aversion to memoirs would have prevented me from reading Richards’ but my husband gave it to me last Christmas. I found the first 200 pages quite engaging. Richards’ earliest memories of the post-war England of his childhood are of bomb craters and ration books, features of wartime deprivation that remained until the mid-50s. He describes a rambunctious childhood — lots of ramming around on bicycles — and typical early education — a bully who is eventually bested and a 3R regimen that ignores huge swaths of human potential. His brief love of school coincided with his membership in a choir that took a lot of prizes, one he was booted from when his voice broke. He credits one teacher for steering him into art school, where he took up the guitar, the first step toward legend as the composer of the Rolling Stones’ most amazing riffs. And it’s the early days of the Stones which held the most interest for me. How from the first their marketing was carefully counter to the goody-goody image of the Beatles. How the Stones and the Beatles scheduled their releases so their new singles wouldn’t hit at the same time. How their earliest gigs were revue shows which had them on stage three times a day for 10 or 15 minutes in three different towns. How they debuted in a music scene dominated by croon-tunes from the Everly Brothers and Beach Boys as the rawest part of a teen tide that simply swept those crooners away. Richards’ recapitulation of the history of that amazing teen tide, which swept the entire western world, is definitely worth reading, worthy of three stars. The rest — not so much. Richards’ descent into heroin addiction turned him into a truly pathetic parent and the junkie story of getting hooking, finding the smack, eluding convictions, etc., offers no new insights into that misfortune. In fact, Richards never explains why he became a junkie and evades even asking himself the question. Why is a question he evades most of the time. Why his penchant for partners who are arm candy, even while he snickers at other rock-star cliches? Why he fell in love with the two women who bore his children? The last 350 pages are pretty tedious — junkie tales, detailed explanations of chords in some of the later Stones’ songs, gossip about Jagger and dish on their disagreements, yadda, yadda, yadda — and typical of celebrity memoirs. That bit earns — barely — a one-star from me.