Keith Richards’ autobiography Life is out now. You know this. I’ve not read it cover to cover yet but have randomly dipped in and out and it’s packed with fascinating details and untold stories told in Keith’s what’s-all-the-fuss-about way. He describes Altamont as “no hairier than getting out of the Empress Ballroom in Blackpool” and “if it hadn’t been for the murder, we’d have thought it a very smooth gig”. Very smooth gig? Brilliant.
One passage that caught my eye was William Burroughs giving Keith advice on how to get off on dope and procure good quality stuff, and then giving him and Gram Parsons a sadistic and ultimately useless drug cure which resulted in Keith and Gram shitting and pissing themselves, sharing a sick bucket, and twitching so hard they kept falling off the bed they were tucked in. “I wondered if it was Bill Burroughs’s joke, to probably send me the worse cure he’d ever had”.
And there’s more. Read it yourself.
Life by Keith Richards is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, priced £20.
Ah you beat me to it, I've got a post in the works on it too! I'm 3/4's through it, very cool read.
ReplyDeleteWell, I did cheat by not reading it all first! Am enjoying it in a random order.
ReplyDeleteI had to do the same thing, went right to the Brian/Anita/drug bust stuff then started from chapter one! I find I do that with most books with chapters...
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