Books
WHY CAN'T we leave Keith alone? For an allegedly shadowy figure, the guitarist's life has been heavily documented and his friends all heavily interrogated. In 1992, Victor Bockris drew on interviews with Richards' 60s girlfriend, Linda Keith, and other embittered former cohorts for his Albert Goldman-esque, Keith Richards: The Unauthorized Biography. Then Stanley Booth, who spent the early 70s as Richards' smack buddy, came along with Keith: Standing in the Shadows, debunking much of Bockris' detective work. There's also the intimate I Was Keith Richards' Drug Dealer, by Tony Sanchez, Keith's longtime lackey and confidant.
Although Richards refused to be interviewed for this latest entry, Christopher Sandford's Satisfaction is arguably the best biography so far. The prose sags throughout with lazy metaphors-"Keith's cauldron of pop, R&B, country and jazz?stirred at [his mother] Doris' knee"-but the anecdotes come so quick and thick with sugar, you hardly notice. The book opens with Keith singing in a children's choir for the Queen and other dignitaries in a performance that allegedly brought Winston Churchill to tears. Later, Richards is in Swedish tax-exile, where his upstairs neighbor is Vladimir Nabokov. The reader is left to wonder what the two might have chatted about while passing in the lobby. Alliteration? Open G tunings? The virtues of pubescent American girls?
None-too-flattering details emerge, as when the usually chivalrous Richards punches his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg in the face. Or when a member of Richards' entourage makes the mistake of asking him about money during a bender at his Jamaican estate, prompting Richards to stick a 38 Special to the guy's head. The legendary blood exchange turns out to be more true than false; although Richards never traded all of his blood, he did undergo extensive dialysis for the removal of toxins.
The best parts of Sandford's account not surprisingly come from the years between Dartford and Altamont. During the 60s, Keith is hopped up on bennies and lager and is actively engaged with the world. He'd go on to spend the 70s sitting on toilets with a needle stuck in his arm. (Sandford claims that when Keith went "clean" in '78, all he quit was heroin. Coke, booze and weed were still fair game.) From the 80s on, Richards is stuck in a rock 'n' roll corporate bubble professionally, and domesticated personally.
The book ends with a couple of pages on the Stones' current finances, where hundreds of millions of dollars, global nostalgia tours and names like EMI blur in a depressing crescendo. It's unlikely there is, or ever will be, anything more to say about Keith Richards.