The more I read Keith Richards book Life, the more I realize how much he actually loves music. He is a true musician, and he was never in it to make a buck. He truly loves what he does, loves to play his guitar. It just happened that he stumbled upon drugs, which according to him did not hinder his music, or help it either. In the book, it does not appear that Richards condones drugs or discourages them either. Rather, he states that he did take drugs. A lot of things happened when he was on drugs. He did not state that drugs helped write songs. He states that drugs helped "insulate" himself from all of the crazy shit that happened around him.
Some quotes:
On playing by ear:
"I don't need this paper. I'm going to play it straight from the ear, straight from here, straight from the heart to the fingers. Nobody has to turn the pages."
On Gram Parsons:
"When I fell in with Gram Parsons in the summer of 1968, I struck a seam of music that I'm still developping, which widened the range of everything I was playing and writing. It also began an instant friendship that already seemed ancient the first time we sat down and talked. It was like a reunion with a long-lost brother for me, I suppose, never having one. Gram was very, very special and I still miss him."
On writing songs:
"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 are playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible with out bringing on a heart attack."
"But a songs should come from the heart. I never had to think about it. I 'd just pick up the guitar or go to the piano and let the stuff come to me. Something would arrive. In coming. And if it didn't, I'd play somebody else's songs. And I've never really had to get to that point of saying, "I'm now going to write a song." I've never ever done that. When I first knew I could do it, I wondered if I could do another one. Then I found they were rolling off my fingers like pearls. I never had any difficulty in writing songs. It was a sheer pleasure. And a wonderful gift that I didn't know I had. It amazes me."
On friendship:
"It's you can hang, can you talk about this without any feeling of distance between you? Friendship is a diminishing of distance between people. "
On Partying:
"The ultimate party, if it's any good, you can't remember it.. It's very hard to explain all that excessive partying. You didn't say, OK, we're going to have a party tonight. It just happened. It was a search for oblivion..."
(a relentless beat= trance)
(fire burn= meant hitting the drum)
(Jah= Give thanks and praises)
On Rastafarianism:
"Rastafarianmism was a religion, but it was a smokers' religion. Their principle was "ignore their world," live without society. Of course they didn't or couldn't - Rastafarianism is a forlorn hope. But at the same time, it's such a forlorn hope... They refused to work within the economic system. They're not going to work for Babylon; they're not going to work for the government. For them that was being taken into slavery. They just wanted to have their space. If you get into the theology, you can can get a little lost. "We're the lost tribe of judah." Ok, anything you say. But why this bunch of black Jamaicans consider themselves to be Jewish is a question.
On Uschi Obermaier:
"She was beautiful. She was quite famous in Germany as a model who had graduated into an icon of the student protest movement...She was a poster girl of the left; her picture was everywhere. She was a mad rock and roll fan...But Uschi's other title, of which she was proud, was the Bavarian Barbarian. She had never taken the ideology seriously, openly drinking banned Pepsi-Cola and smoking menthol cigarettes and upsetting other Commune dictates... Her road is littered with guys who tried to tame her. They tried to tame something that's untamable. She's the best bad girl I know."
On Fame:
"At first you were a novelty. But then that's what they thought about rock and roll in the 60's. And then they wished you to fuck off. And then when you didn't fuck off, they wished you to death."
"I think in a way your persona, your image, as it used to be known, is like a ball and chain. People think I'm still a goddamn junkie. It's thirty years since I gave up the dope! Image is like a long shadow. Even when the sun goes down, you can see it. I think some of it is that there is so much pressure to be that person that you become it, maybe, to a certain point that you can bear. It's impossible not to end up being a parody of what you thought you were."
Another thing that runs deep through the book, in every single chapter, is how much Keith honors these things:
1) Music
2) Friendship
Pretty much, if you become his mate, his buddy. He is with you for life. Anyone talks down to you? He will "slit their throat."
Despite his war with Mick Jagger, he still has his back. Once Keith is your friend, there is no shaking him.
