Keith richards autobiography excerpt

Oh, you don't remember shooting the gun?
Keith Richards with James Fox Exclusive extract from Keith Richards' brilliant, long-awaited autobiography.
The silence is your canvas, that's your frame, that's what you work on; don't try and deafen it out.

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Part II

"You Can Always Get What You Want"
Keith Richards with James Fox Exclusive extract from Keith Richards’ brilliant, long-awaited autobiography

By 1967, the Rolling Stones were the most controversial, explosive rock band on the planet. Two years earlier, when their pop rivals the Beatles had collected their MBEs from the Queen, the Stones had been arrested for urinating in public and demonised for making overtly sexual records such as the raw, aggressive Satisfaction. Then they had been touring dank pubs and clubs in beaten-up vans; now they were superstars complete with drugs, groupies and Bentleys. From London to the US to Morocco, they left a trail of mayhem. And at the group’s heart was Keith Richards, the man who still epitomises sex and drugs and rock’n’roll. For the first time, he reveals in his own words life in the world’s greatest rock’n’roll band.

The Redlands bust and the truth about that Mars bar

“Post-acid” was the prevailing mood at Redlands [Richards

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Yeah, we’re the late show on this. But a couple weeks ago we finally finished Keith Richards’ immensely entertaining and illuminating memoir, “Life.”

The following were amongst our favorite passages (emphasis added):

Richards on touring:

“The grind is the traveling, the hotel food, whatever. It’s a hard drill sometimes. But once I the stage, all of that miraculously goes away. Thee grind is never the stage performance. I can play the same song again and again, year after year. When Jumping Jack Flash comes up again it’s never a repetition, always a variation. Always. I would never play a song again once I thought it was dead. We couldn’t just churn it out. The real release is getting on stage. Once we’re up there doing it, it’s sheer fun and joy. Some long-distance stamina, of course, is needed. And the only way I can sustain the impetus over the long course we do is by feeding off the energy that we get back from the audience. That’s my fuel. All I’ve got is this burning energy, espe

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Life Quotes

“Memory is fiction,”
― Keith Richards, Life

“We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.”
― Keith Richards, Life

“There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.”
― Keith Richards, Life

“What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and tak