Life... by Keith Richards( no spoilers)

Enjoy the book. I read it years ago and enjoyed it all the way. He clears up the story about falling and bonking his head with all the details..

Also read and enjoyed it and, yes, it is more enjoyable than some other rock bios.

I tried to read Neil Young's and could get very far. That one came across as rambling and incoherent to me.

I'm another who read it a shortly after it came out. I found it very interesting and enjoyable. Yes, it's an easy read.

Loved the book, agree with Pinetree. He certainly does not glamorize his drug use and describes his detox graphically and he does not spare himself in his assessment of what kind of parent he was because of it. I admired his honesty and loved his humor. But I was honestly most amazed by the Bobby Keys stories. Can't imagine any Stones fan not owning this one. (disclaimer: well I DID own it but I loaned it to someone who loaned it to someone---)

This thread lets me indulge in the only real story I have about my father, Joe Richard Taylor, from whom I was estranged at a very early age. I learned only a few years ago that he was one of the officers who arrested Keith and Ron Wood in Fordyce, Arkansas during the summer of 1975--the opening scene of Keith's book. (See encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/arrest-of-the-rolling-stones-3442/)

For lots of reasons involving both parents, my family was broken by the time I was 2 or 3. My mother's family practically denied my father's existence, evaded most of my questions and led me to believe he was evil and didn't ever want to see me. I knew only that he was a law enforcement officer in Dallas County, Arkansas and, unfortunately, didn't try to make contact before he died in the 90s.

I never made the connection until stumbling across the Encyclopedia of Arkansas article 5-6 years ago. Bill Carter was kind enough to share his version of the night's events with me in a long phone conversation, as was the prosecutor who was there that night.

I got only one story about my dad, but it's a pretty good one.

Staylor, great story !

It is an enjoyable read, mainly because his memory is still sharp, or at least he has probably told the tales enough so that they're etched in his brain, and he is a good, witty storyteller. My impression is that he didn't have so much of  a ghost writer, but more of an editor who had a detailed timeline of his life, set up a tape and a microphone, and just asked questions and let him go, then strung all the parts together.

Have been listening to this via Youtube.

The growing up in postwar England and the formation and success of the band in the sixties was interesting but the stories of his drug use around the era of Exile on Main Street and Goatshead Soup just turned me off. Justifying being a junkie isn't much of a story.


I always had a dim view of Mick Jagger, thinking Keith was the cooler character, but after hearing Keith's side of the story I now have much more sympathy for Jagger. Trying to keep "the show on the road", when the other half of the partnership responsible for the great songs, was off his face and unable to control his drug use most of the time and just plainly being irresponsible.


YMMV