Life: Keith Richards [Paperback]

Keith Richards is in danger of becoming respectable, what with starring interviews on the Andrew Marr show, bit parts in Disney's "the Pirates of Caribbean" and an emerging status as national treasure. He has even received the ultimate accolade this week namely a vicious attack from the increasingly insane ex Trot and current bigot Peter Hitchens who blamed him for causing more damage than the Iraq War and described him as "a debauched, capering streak of living gristle who ought to be exhibited as a warning to the young of what drugs can do to you". As usual Hitchens couldn't be more wrong since after reading "Life" a electrifying autobiography ghost written with James Fox someone ought to work out the physiology of Richards since the man is clearly indestructible despite the most astounding chemical intake and even more remarkable he appears to going as strong as ever. The life of this man who founded the Rolling Stones, invented rock guitar, gave us "Honky Tonk Women", "Brown Sugar", the seminal "Exile on Main Street" and a host of other treasures is something we should warmly celebrate and not carp about.

Great rock autobiographies are a rare species but this book by Richards amounting 547 pages ranging from a drug bust in Fordyce, Arkansas to a quick final explanation that he did indeed snort his Dad's ashes (but in a very affectionate way!) and ending in the death of his dear old mum Doris is a very intimate, revealing, warts an all account of a fascinating life packed with brilliant photographs and stories to spare. Fox has captured his subject well and you can hear Richards voice loud and clear with its colourful language of "cats", his love of Shepherd's pie ("don't bust the crust") and roguish charm. You will not be surprised that a large part of the book deals with Richards copious pharmaceutical use. Indeed with parts of his memory wiped out sections of the text are given over to the first hand remembrances of family members and friends like Waddy Watchel, Don Was and his great mate Bobby Keys which are often very harrowing. The legendary Freddie Sessler "Keith's second dad" is a key figure here. This is a man who described himself as "the worlds oldest groupie", got Keith out of "scrapes" and supplied his drugs including pharmaceutical cocaine graphically described in a passage on page 373. Richards knows that he was lucky to survive all this hedonism and the poignancy of his remarks when he tells us stories about the deaths of fellow travellers like Billy Preston and Gram Parsons are all the more pronounced and sad for it. The fact that his co-conspirator Ronnie Wood navigated this madness particularly with a his own "freebasing" crack cocaine indulgences which Richards highlights from 1980 onwards is another example of the "get out of jail" philosophy of life employed by the two most colourful members of the Stones.

At the core of the book is the Jagger/Richards relationship which has gone through phases of almost tender brotherly love to intense visceral hatred (listen to "Had it with you" on Dirty Work which charts the nadir of this phase). The cleaned up Richards circa 1980s "Emotional Rescue" cannot today forgive Jagger's attitude on "his return" who had "fallen in love with power" and whose constant put downs of him are still very raw. As he states "the phrase which rings in my ears all these years later is "Oh, shut up Keith". Things gradually improved over the years and despite Jagger's Knighthood ("the Mick I grew up was a guy who'd say shove your little honours up your ar*e") by 2004 Richards and Jagger were working a closely as ever and he accepts "you've got to go through the bulls**t; its like a marriage"

The book charts all the great Richards myths, the blood changing, the skull ring, the tax exile in France, the falling out of the tree incident and the Toronto drug bust in huge detail which finally led to him giving up heroin. The part however which I especially enjoyed was his early years around Dartford and Sidcup and his passion for the blues particularly Jack Elliot and the impact of Elvis. The generosity throughout to the great Charlie Watts who clearly is the glue that holds the Stones together, and a great loss to the United Nations Peace Keeping Corps, is genuine and full of love. Watts survival from cancer is emotionally charted by Richards and his relief tangible that Watts came back. And then there is the music not just with the Stones but Keith's side projects like the X-pensive Wino's which is a tale well told; while his relationship with Anita Pallenberg and its impact on the construction of the Stones greatest song "Gimme Shelter" is fascinatingly unveiled.

The life of Keith Richards is a chronicle of the ultimate rock survivor and icon. Frankly he should not be here and the fact that he never sleeps means he has been here "longer" than the average 66 year old. Despite yourself you can't help but be absorbed by the myth and legend of the man, his bluntness and his often outspoken nonsense. Let us be frank anyone who calls his dog "Syphilis" must have something going for him. Consequently when in a hundred years time someone sits down and writes the definitive history of rock music it should start with the sentence that "In the beginning was the riff and the riff was with Keith".

It's hard to judge this book. When I was thirteen my sister and I gravitated from Elvis and Cliff to the Beatles and the Stones, buying every LP as it was released. Later at University Beggars Banquet was played more than anything. Many years later I played Exile on Main Street solid for ten years, so much I can hardly listen to it now.

So I can't be objective, its like reading a book by my cousin. It's very very frank about relationships, about drugs, about occasional violence. There's a lot of stuff about musical technique, just like Miles Davis's autobiography, which it reminds me of. I don't understand most of this not being a guitarist, but the feel of these sections is great. It makes you want to get out all your John Lee Hooker and Jimmy Reed records.

The section about Brian Jones is revealing. This is actually the first book about the Stones I have read, so in comparison with the general familiarity from newspaper stories and rumours I had this is great, and Richards has an aura of telling the truth, by and large I would mostly buy what he's saying. There is also a very moving section about Gram Parsons, who seems to have been one of his closest musical associates and friends.

Earlier, all the stuff about his family is fabulous. Its worth tracking down the full length version of the Andrew Marr interview on BBCi incidentally, where Marr and Keith say his childhood was Dickensian which was exactly what was going through my head when I was reading about his wonderful family. His mother and his maternal grandfather were something else.

Some of the stuff about about the early sixties blues scene echoes what you can read in, say, a Pete Townshend biography I've read. Incidentally, Richards has almost nothing to say about any of his contemporaries musically, except to some extent the Beatles. But mostly that's about how the Beatles were marketed and about the scene they created. No opinions are expressed about say Clapton, the Who, or Hendrix. But then Richards isn't into judging much, unless someone steps on his blue suede shoes (or gets to the cottage pie before he does - read the book).

Mostly the book is about the folks he meets as he navigates his way through life which was always a struggle for one reason or another until the end of the seventies when he emerges from heroin and then meets his current wife Patti.

And of course there's some fascinating stuff about Jagger. I started to skip a little towards the end as I am less interested in their later music. But this is great for Stones fans and also it's a fascinating social record. If you want to know about superstardom south London style go for it.

Life is the best rock biography I have ever read (though it is not a genre I often indulge since it is mostly moderate talents with big heads blowing their predictable trumpets). The quality of the writing is actually poor, sort of speech rhythms, but that's fine since you just hear Keef's voice drawling at you in its charming, amiable way.

His life is full of surprises; being unwittingly used as getaway driver for a jewellery heist when the Stones were already big, delicate and understanding about the women who mattered, badly bullied at school, great, bizarre drug stories (which could so easily have been a tedious staple in lesser hands) and always the wry observer of the wild world he moved through.

Perhaps predictably, what endears the most is the artist in the man. He loves the music. He is as big a fan as any hormonal teenager. It even starts to seem odd that the (brilliant, wonderful) Stones should be such a success since what we have here is a man who adores other musicians.

Despite his laconic swagger on stage, there is none of the expected arrogance. He spent days on end learning tiny little variations on chords just to play London pubs - that was the horizon of his initial vision of the Stones.

In the end this is a life-affirming book, brimming with artistic passion and never taking the pop world seriously. Like all great artists, Keef comes across as a true one-off, and a pleasure to listen to.