Keith Richards - Life

I tooled through this memoir last week. It gets extremely high marks and I recommend it for anyone that enjoys music - Stones fan or not. This is some of what you'll get:

- Tons of insight into how many of the Stones best songs were written - often, their MO seemed to be something like; Keith bringing a riff and song title or a piece of the lyric to the band and Mick writing the rest of the lyrics while Charlie and Keith tossed around ideas for the music.

- His nonchalant treatment of the number of times he escaped death. Seriously, no one has flipped their car more times and he would just mention it somewhere in the middle of a paragraph, like it was nothing. From the NYTimes Review: "Keith Richards...named both No. 1 on the rock stars most-likely-to-die list and the one life form (besides the cockroach) capable of surviving nuclear war."

- Honest accounts of his drug use. Basically 10 straight years on H, late 60s through the 70s (when their best albums came out...), and a lifetime on blow.

- Homage to his musical heroes and his love of the blues and music. He seriously loves music, says it makes him levitate. Soon as he gets into the riff for Start Me Up (I guess they start their shows with it) and Charlie comes in with the drums, he says he's three feet off the ground and that there is no feeling like it. It really came through, what the music has meant for him in his life. It could come off as a bit diluted for someone this successful to say that it has always been just about the music, but it feels genuine from him. This feeling was probably the best thing I got from the book, it's pretty sick.

- Some sort of technical discussion of his guitar playing, which he wrote in a way that makes sense to the layperson. He also pays particular attention to the time when he decided to switch to open tuning and what it meant for his playing. 'Tumbling Dice,' 'Brown Sugar,' and 'Honky Tonk Woman' (that tune really reminds me of Tully for some reason, quintessential Stones riff and corresponding Jagger dance I guess) are a few that are in open tunings.

- His relationship with Mick. He seems to have profound respect for him but feels that fame got to Mick more than the rest of the band and that led to their biggest disagreements. But he used to love how Mick danced. And he fucking loves Charlie Watts, loves him.

- An all around well written book that was easy to read and full of great stories.