Seas of Blood and Mountains of skulls would have been a good title for Keith's book.

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Silver Dagger
For our non UK members it should be pointed out that Peter Hitchens is a firebrand reactionary who the right wing Daily Mail wheel out to fire up their right wing middle class readers. He's a tosser of the highest order.

You bet. But not everyone is feeling' the love...

Thank you Silver Dagger for the explanation. I thought the guy was a stand up comedian.

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Keep On Rolling

At first reading the guy seems to have a point about the petty morals and the judges supposedly heroic deeds during the war. But it becomes laughable when the author refers to his father. "Like my father" .... sure.

.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-12-14 14:16 by akgameboy.

Quote_-----What did the judge make of this? Old he might have been, but he was not petty and he knew more about morals than Mr Richards ever will. He had survived the sinking by the Japanese of the aircraft carrier Hermes in the Indian Ocean in 1942 and (like my father) was present at the Battle of North Cape in 1943, perhaps the last great fleet action of the Royal Navy.-----unquote Peter Hitchins, Daily Mail

Does this mean that the men who didn't survive this sinking or who weren't present at this or some other battle were like Mr Richards (sic) and also understood little about morals ? Methinks....a hole in his 'logic' unless of course being lucky does automatically makes one morally superior....



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2010-12-14 14:40 by EddieByword.

If there is any joy to be found in Jagger's knighthood it is to think how much it pisses people like Peter Hatchins... It surely pisses himself as much as it does Keith Richards - two men who seem to be equally nostalgic for pre-1967 Britain and "establishment"... ><

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-12-14 15:00 by Doxa.

always thot his bro, christopher, had an uncanny resemblance to our own gazza.

gazza: if you and christopher are one and the same, it's okay to come out now and tell us what you really think of your brother...

I thought he died?

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ablett
Well said Silver Dagger. Mr Hitchens has some of the most ridiculous opinions in print.

Is he related to Christopher?

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71Tele

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ablett
Well said Silver Dagger. Mr Hitchens has some of the most ridiculous opinions in print.

Is he related to Christopher?

his younger bro - and possibly the younger bro of gazza - still awaiting confirmation (see post above)

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StonesTod
always thot his bro, christopher, had an uncanny resemblance to our own gazza.

F**k, I hope not. After his chemo, the poor guy's as baldy as an egg these days and looks about 70.

Have to say its a comparison thats new to me...LOL

I'd imagine that Peter sees Christopher as a 'sneering lout' as well, so Keith is in good company.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-12-14 19:11 by Gazza.

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Gazza

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StonesTod
always thot his bro, christopher, had an uncanny resemblance to our own gazza.

F**k, I hope not. the poor guy's as baldy as an egg these days and looks about 70.

i fail to see your point

Bullshit article by an absolute @#$%&. Such a load of right-wing pap.

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Ferret
Bullshit article by an absolute @#$%&. Such a load of right-wing pap.

there's a lot of that going on these days

Another review San Francisco Chronicle today,

I've been reading "Life" by Keith Richards, which is really a remarkable book. It's written rather than dictated or put together by some almost anonymous ghost from press releases and interviews. There is a non-anonymous ghost, James Fox, but the voice is really consistent and distinct and the prose often surprising.

Of course, you have to know who Keith Richards is and care, so that's going to limit the audience a bit. Still, he is a prominent member of one of the most famous and long-lived rock 'n' roll bands in the world; he has a few fans. Plus, he himself is long-lived, which is remarkable given what he did in his life. The lad has a plucky little constitution, able to absorb many substances (and many "cures") without kicking the bucket.

He's been off heroin for 20 years now, but he's not exactly sober. He's still working, playing with his grandkids, as unlikely a paterfamilias as one could find.

About page 150 I ran into this paragraph, written about his first time touring the United States, back when the Rolling Stones weren't anybody at all, particularly over here:

"And the radio! You couldn't believe it after England. Being there at a time of a real musical explosion, sitting in a car with the radio on was being in heaven. You could turn the channels and get 10 country stations, five black stations, and if you were traveling the country and they faded out, you just turned the dial again and there was another great song. Black music was exploding. It was a powerhouse. At Motown they had a factory but without turning out automatons. We lived off Motown on the road, just waiting for the next Four Tops or the next Temptations. Motown was our food, on the road and off. Listening to car radios through a thousand miles to get to the next gig. That was the beauty of America. We used to dream of it before we got here."

Heck, I used to dream of it before I got here too. The cross-country road trip was the ultimate expression of both freedom and connection. I've done it twice 30 years apart, with lots of the long trips around the West and to Chicago in between. Each time has been an adventure. Each time has been different.

There's something almost ecstatic about taking, say, Highway 50 from Reno to the Utah border. Big skies, small towns, lots of branching dirt roads leading to ... well, why not take a chance? Could be a hot spring; could be an Army installation; could be a homesteader who's waiting with either a fresh pot of coffee or a shotgun. He saw you a long time before you saw him.

And for a California boy like me, the back roads of Ohio or Pennsylvania are equally exotic. There are roadside signs - in Wyoming, it's like "oh, the Pony Express came through here." In Indiana, it's more like, "oh, we killed some Indians here."

But the music is different. Not so many black stations, in my experience, except around the cities - that just reflects the changing realities of rural life. What you get instead are Spanish-language stations. I have no idea whether the music is innovative or traditional and just blandly commercial; I have no ear for that music, much to my loss.

Nevertheless, it's happening out there, in the new rural America, the Spanish one we're all pretending doesn't exist. It's a lot like the sharecropper rural America before World War II. Maybe the next generation of musicians will hear the Hispanic music my ears are deaf to.

There's still country music, but it's not like the country music Richards heard. It's as overproduced as pop, most of it, and the glimmers of talent that shine through seem to be there almost by accident. Still, I imagine there are great stations out there if I knew what to listen for and where to listen for it.

The new stuff is white Christian radio stations, tons of them, ranging from sincere to charlatan, and right-wing talk radio, Limbaugh, of course, but also lots of local talk jockeys with opinions designed to make this city boy's jaw drop. They're all over the place; the music isn't very good, and the America they outline is crabbed and fearful. Cross-country is not as exhilarating as it was when Motown dominated the airwaves.

Still, it is that trip that must be taken. Yes, I know, fossil fuel; take a Prius. Compared with what the typical office building is doing every day, my little Honda is small potatoes. Soon, I fear, the great search for America from the front seat of a car will be over; too much paranoia and too little time. Interstate 80 is right out the door; drive a while, pick an exit and take it, always heading eastward.


Two lane blacktop, running down through the night, nothing but static on the radio and fries on the dashboard.

Edmund is the good one, isn't that right? Definitely not Edgar. Wait'll you hear what Gloster has to say about all this! It put grave imaginings in the head of jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.
[www.sfgate.com]


Read more: [www.sfgate.com]

David Sinclair - review
The Guardian, Saturday 18 December 2010

The memoirs of a wizened rock god turned out to be one of the publishing sensations of the year. Life (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20) by Keith Richards with James Fox is a startlingly candid account of one man's largely successful attempt to indulge in hitherto unimagined extremes of narcotic excess while somehow holding down a job in the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world. With such a fund of dramatic material at his disposal, Richards does not disappoint in the telling of his tale. Run-ins with law enforcement agencies on the one hand, and drug dealers on the other, are described with a nonchalant swagger. Unexplained car crashes, mysterious fires in hotels and houses, lurid sexual betrayals, fights, shootings and deaths occur against a rolling backdrop of epic drink and drug binges. There is also a lot of serious consideration given over to the subject of music – everything from fascinating insights into the songwriting process that produced so many monumental hits to more specialised explanations of the minutiae of open-tuning guitar techniques.
Lucid and unusually well researched for this kind of book, Life is a compelling read on every level. It is also revealing in unintended ways. Richards is nothing if not comfortable in his own skin, and the way in which he blithely recounts so many troubling, even macabre episodes, as if they were simple mishaps that occurred through no real fault of his own, becomes faintly jarring after a while. Sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow? Threatening a taxi driver with a knife? Turning up blind drunk to meet his prospective in-laws for the first time and smashing a guitar on their dinner table? Hey, that's Life.
The latter part of the memoir is driven to an unhealthy degree by his antipathy towards Mick Jagger, his songwriting partner of almost 50 years. Richards accuses Jagger of vanity and disloyalty, while in the same pages recounting how he bedded Jagger's girlfriend Marianne Faithfull under the singer's nose and casting withering aspersions on his manhood. Jagger is no saint. But you end up feeling that he must be blessed with unusual reserves of stoicism to have put up with Richards's outrageously self-absorbed behaviour and incessant needling over such a long period of time.

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proudmary
David Sinclair - review
The Guardian, Saturday 18 December 2010

The memoirs of a wizened rock god turned out to be one of the publishing sensations of the year. Life (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20) by Keith Richards with James Fox is a startlingly candid account of one man's largely successful attempt to indulge in hitherto unimagined extremes of narcotic excess while somehow holding down a job in the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world. With such a fund of dramatic material at his disposal, Richards does not disappoint in the telling of his tale. Run-ins with law enforcement agencies on the one hand, and drug dealers on the other, are described with a nonchalant swagger. Unexplained car crashes, mysterious fires in hotels and houses, lurid sexual betrayals, fights, shootings and deaths occur against a rolling backdrop of epic drink and drug binges. There is also a lot of serious consideration given over to the subject of music – everything from fascinating insights into the songwriting process that produced so many monumental hits to more specialised explanations of the minutiae of open-tuning guitar techniques.
Lucid and unusually well researched for this kind of book, Life is a compelling read on every level. It is also revealing in unintended ways. Richards is nothing if not comfortable in his own skin, and the way in which he blithely recounts so many troubling, even macabre episodes, as if they were simple mishaps that occurred through no real fault of his own, becomes faintly jarring after a while. Sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow? Threatening a taxi driver with a knife? Turning up blind drunk to meet his prospective in-laws for the first time and smashing a guitar on their dinner table? Hey, that's Life.
The latter part of the memoir is driven to an unhealthy degree by his antipathy towards Mick Jagger, his songwriting partner of almost 50 years. Richards accuses Jagger of vanity and disloyalty, while in the same pages recounting how he bedded Jagger's girlfriend Marianne Faithfull under the singer's nose and casting withering aspersions on his manhood. Jagger is no saint. But you end up feeling that he must be blessed with unusual reserves of stoicism to have put up with Richards's outrageously self-absorbed behaviour and incessant needling over such a long period of time.

That's one of the best reviews I've read so far about this book. Kind of covers it in a nutshell.

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sweetcharmedlife

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proudmary
David Sinclair - review
The Guardian, Saturday 18 December 2010

The memoirs of a wizened rock god turned out to be one of the publishing sensations of the year. Life (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20) by Keith Richards with James Fox is a startlingly candid account of one man's largely successful attempt to indulge in hitherto unimagined extremes of narcotic excess while somehow holding down a job in the greatest rock'n'roll band in the world. With such a fund of dramatic material at his disposal, Richards does not disappoint in the telling of his tale. Run-ins with law enforcement agencies on the one hand, and drug dealers on the other, are described with a nonchalant swagger. Unexplained car crashes, mysterious fires in hotels and houses, lurid sexual betrayals, fights, shootings and deaths occur against a rolling backdrop of epic drink and drug binges. There is also a lot of serious consideration given over to the subject of music – everything from fascinating insights into the songwriting process that produced so many monumental hits to more specialised explanations of the minutiae of open-tuning guitar techniques.
Lucid and unusually well researched for this kind of book, Life is a compelling read on every level. It is also revealing in unintended ways. Richards is nothing if not comfortable in his own skin, and the way in which he blithely recounts so many troubling, even macabre episodes, as if they were simple mishaps that occurred through no real fault of his own, becomes faintly jarring after a while. Sleeping with a loaded gun under his pillow? Threatening a taxi driver with a knife? Turning up blind drunk to meet his prospective in-laws for the first time and smashing a guitar on their dinner table? Hey, that's Life.
The latter part of the memoir is driven to an unhealthy degree by his antipathy towards Mick Jagger, his songwriting partner of almost 50 years. Richards accuses Jagger of vanity and disloyalty, while in the same pages recounting how he bedded Jagger's girlfriend Marianne Faithfull under the singer's nose and casting withering aspersions on his manhood. Jagger is no saint. But you end up feeling that he must be blessed with unusual reserves of stoicism to have put up with Richards's outrageously self-absorbed behaviour and incessant needling over such a long period of time.

That's one of the best reviews I've read so far about this book. Kind of covers it in a nutshell.

Exactly

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proudmary
Jagger is no saint. But you end up feeling that he must be blessed with unusual reserves of stoicism to have put up with Richards's outrageously self-absorbed behaviour and incessant needling over such a long period of time.

Hello...I am from the future. That line could be used to describe Mick Jagger's treatment of Keith in his own autobiography.

See you in 2015.

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MJG196

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proudmary
Jagger is no saint. But you end up feeling that he must be blessed with unusual reserves of stoicism to have put up with Richards's outrageously self-absorbed behaviour and incessant needling over such a long period of time.

Hello...I am from the future. That line could be used to describe Mick Jagger's treatment of Keith in his own autobiography.

See you in 2015.

That's the great line. In fact I can't understand how and why Jagger copes with Keith for so long. Maybe is it love?

Having known Keith during the early years.. I wondered what Keith's book would reveal. To me it showed he is still the honest resilient guy that I knew in 1964 and I liked the book for what it was. On my meandtherollingstones blog I am devoting a section that basically reinforces some of Keith's generalities.
It's interesting that before I left NY for LA (1987), how many times I met people at parties that said they were good friends of Keith. These people were always big time drug dealers. It's great that he beat the 'big boy'..but I recall his bigger penchant for alcohol and cigarettes. In the book I think he says that he got into Jack Daniels during Exiles...I will have to look for pics but I recall bottles of Jack on the amps or speakers during the Euro tour.. thanks to Bobby Keyes!!.. I will go into those stories at some later date and how lucky we were to escape alive...

Thanks for the critics of The Guardian. Agree, it's one of the best. Serious papers mean usually serious job.

Is there an number of ww sales of the book ? USA today put it at # 13 with
a peak at # 3. But no figures. I am still happily surprised to see Life on the front of many Bookstores in Paris.


[content.usatoday.com]

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phd
Thanks for the critics of The Guardian. Agree, it's one of the best. Serious papers mean usually serious job.

Thanks for thanks. It's nice to have feedback. Sometimes I have the feeling that I post just for myself and nobody pays attention, you know what I mean?

It's been in the top 5 in New Zealand for about 6 weeks - it did get to number one for a fortnight.

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bmuseed
Having known Keith during the early years..

Thanks for your review Ron. Good to see you are still here

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Keep On Rolling

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proudmary

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phd
Thanks for the critics of The Guardian. Agree, it's one of the best. Serious papers mean usually serious job.

Thanks for thanks. It's nice to have feedback. Sometimes I have the feeling that I post just for myself and nobody pays attention, you know what I mean?

Whether somebody quotes you or not. Plenty of lurkers out there reading always.

"It's just some friends of mine and they're busting down the door"

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sweetcharmedlife

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proudmary

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phd
Thanks for the critics of The Guardian. Agree, it's one of the best. Serious papers mean usually serious job.

Thanks for thanks. It's nice to have feedback. Sometimes I have the feeling that I post just for myself and nobody pays attention, you know what I mean?

Whether somebody quotes you or not. Plenty of lurkers out there reading always.

maybe you're right. But like Palace Revolution put it - "Many posters are posting into the wind. Lately many, many threads end up being selective privatized conversations". I agree with him

Mary, I listen to you. I don't always agree, but most days I enjoy your tireless defense of Mick. It's sweet.