There are very few people in the world who can tell their life story like Keith Richards. A story of blues, rock, life on a knife's edge. A story told by a hedonist, a guitar god and, most recently, a literary lion. Honest, clear and addictive, just like the author's personality, probably the best rock'n'roll read.
Five hundred pages of memoirs give the reader the feeling of having really met Keith Richards in person. A feeling that is often difficult to achieve with a book. The book gives you the impression that Kiff is sitting next to you in a chair, cigarette in hand, telling you stories over a bottle of his favorite bourbon. If you need another reason to read The Life of Keith Richards, know that Keith is seventy-two years old, but he could tell at least one hundred and forty stories from his life.
Photo: Pavol Zachar www.zacharphoto.com , GQ
Every wrinkle tells a wild story, a smile offers a punchline with a question mark.
The autobiography, written with the help of longtime friend James Fox, immediately shot to the top of the bestseller pyramids in bookstores after its first publication in 2010. And rightly so. Make no mistake, this is not some vague mini-memoir of a pop star that is pouring onto shelves every month. The extraordinary style of the book and its story will take you through Kiff's life from his childhood, through the wild sixties and seventies, to the present in such detail that the question arises: how the hell can Keith remember it all?! Well… after five years spent interviewing Keith Richard, James Fox interviewed more than one hundred and forty of Keith's friends and acquaintances, who helped fill in the gaps in his memory, so that today it is possible to get a complete picture of who he really is in five hundred pages.
And this picture depicts a roller coaster ride. Keith's face doesn't lie, everything you can read when you look into it is genuine and unadulterated. Every wrinkle tells a wild story, every smile offers a punchline with a question mark. The book tells the story of seventy hard years that one of the founders of rock'n'roll lived through, without the need to glorify the main protagonist. Honesty is one of the most captivating things about a memoir, whether Keith talks about life on the road, his drug problem, or his love of music. But it is precisely the addiction to music that stands out above all else and shows Richards' true personality.
Music is his true addiction. At the end of the day, it's what makes him one of the best guitarists in the world.
It offers a glimpse into the mind of a born bluesman who idolized greats like Little Richard and Chuck Berry, and gives the reader a real sense of who Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones really are. All the excesses of a rock'n'roll band are in the book, where they belong, but it is the genius of mastering the instrument and composing that does not come from heaven, from clever producers or blind luck, as the haters of bands with a wild lifestyle like to claim. It comes from years of hard work, which is more than evident throughout the autobiography. Keith's passion for his craft, which emerges from the plot, is something we would not really look for in a biography of a rolling stone, motivation for everyday life.
Passages where Richards digresses into detailed explanations of the nuances of his guitar playing pop up throughout the book, revealing what, despite the general perception of him, is truly important to him. Music is his true addiction. At the end of the day, it's what makes him one of the best guitarists in the world. Add in the expected wild band stories, such as driving from Paris to Morocco in Keith's Bentley, and a very descriptive, almost creepy, section on drugs, and you have a perfect picture of the life of a living legend.
The book gives you the impression that Kiff is sitting next to you in a chair, cigarette in hand, telling you stories over a bottle of his favorite bourbon.
