Life, by Keith Richards

I read this book hoping it would be a balls-to-the-wall fuckfest full of ridiculous gossip and insane stories. It's not really that. Keith's voice in the book is pretty charming and he bequeaths himself very honorable attributes (friendship, loyalty, humility, toughness), painting a picture of himself as a pretty great guy. Sure, the Rolling Stones used to go on two or three hours late every night because Keith would be high on heroin and no one could wake him up because he slept with a gun under his pillow, but that is just lovable Keith, right? I mean, yeah—that sounds pretty awesome.

The main problem with the book is that it just lists events—nothing is really fleshed out. And most of the events are either vague times that Keith wrote a song, or more often, times that Keith couldn't find heroin, luckily found a lot of heroin, or had to go through security with a bunch of heroin. And he can't really remember those times very well.

It also seems like whenever Keith was tired he would just say to the writer, "ask someone else," which is why there are so many observations from other people. A few observations from Keith's son, Marlon, are outstanding, because they describe the crazy life he had going on tour with the Rolling Stones when he was seven years old and then living in the Great Gatsby house with two lunatics. But those descriptions are only about a page long, and many of the other observations in the book are thrown in without any real point.

Here are some of the main claims in the book:

1. Keith Richards is able to ingest a ton of drugs and alcohol, better than anyone else. Especially John Lennon.

2. Mick Jagger needs to get off his high horse and he is generally a pussy.

3. It's O.K. to do a ton of drugs if you monitor the amount and only do the best stuff.

4. Keith loves women, but many times he'll just lie in bed with them and not have sex. Unlike Mick Jagger, who is just about having sex for the sake of sex. And Mick Jagger has huge balls and a small penis.

If the whole book was ragging on Mick Jagger, I would have liked it more. But he is very much on the periphery and one of the least described characters, I felt.