This weekend, hope you'll join me for episode one (show #280) of the brand new season of the weekly Legends of Classic Rock Show. Inspiration for this one comes from a new book called "What Would Keith Richards Do - Daily Affirmations from a Rock 'N' Roll Survivor" by Jessica Pallington West (published by Bloomsbury). Like most books about rock stars, it's unauthorized, however, beyond the authors own perspective, the bulk of the book comes from the horses mouth in that she has culled and compiled quotes from the last five decades from Keith himself.
I'll bring many to the radio, surrounded by Keith solo and Stones tunes, mostly Keith lead vocals which beyond 'Happy' and occasionly 'Little T&A' rarely get played, anywhere. (one criterion for the Legends series being 'inject songs that aren't obvious and beaten to death' ;)
Of the book, the Toronto Star says:
"West boils the notoriously loose-tongued Richards down to his most bon of mots, and lays them side by side with those of Aristotle, Plato, Saint Augustine (!?!) and Neitzsche. The result is a fairly (um) sobering case that the Rolling Stones' 65-year-old guitarist, a man so buffeted by trouble and impervious to chemical indulgences that he was once allied with cockroaches as the creatures most likely to survive a nuclear holocaust ("Poor old cockroaches," quipped Richards), is a virtual walking testament to the transcendent human spirit."
Here's a sample of Keithisms:
"For me, the music is the most important thing, and the image comes from the way I play it".
"You've only got to have one broken tooth for everyone to think you're a villain"
(And this, I figure worth including for all the guitar hero and rock band maniacs): "Three notes, two fingers, and an asshole, and you've got it! You can play the darned thing. That's all it takes. What you do with it is another thing".
"There are drug overtones in about 1 percent of the band's songs, and Mick wrote them, not me"
"I cry quite often. I look at a picture of my grandfather somtimes, listening to the music he loved".
"Fashion thinks about me more than I think about it"
"The were just as filthy as we were" (on the Beatles)
"Phil is, and always will be, a complete weirdo" (on Phil Spector)
"I just want to be Muddy Waters. Even though I'll never be that good or that black".
"The only guy I know who could make every chick in the audience weep ... beautiful pain. He had that to the max" (on Gram Parsons)
"He was ... very similar to me in that he was trying to find his own place to hide. He just hid too deep" (on Jimi Hendrix)
As a non-lover of cheese, I was pleased to learn this one: 'Cheese is very wrong' (Keith claiming it's the one thing he won't put in his body)
And finally, for now, with lots more to come in the book and this weekend on the Legends weekly show (check your local airtimes): "I do what I do. Don't try this at home".
Long live Keith Richards! A video treat below featuring 'The Lost Highway Men' i.e. a couple of my favourites: Ryan Adams, Hank Williams III, along with Willie Nelson and Keith. Enjoy.
Cheers,
Jeff.