Book Review: Daily Affirmations from Keith Richards

BOOK REVIEW: "What Would Keith Richards Do? Daily Affirmations From a Rock and Roll Survivor (Bloomsbury) by Jessica Pallington West

“I’ve never had a problem with drugs, only with policemen.”—Keith Richards.

Drug addict. Reprobate. Satanist. This is how many people think of Keith Richards, guitarist/co-founder of The Rolling Stones. Hard truth about him has been skewed by notoriety, or are Richard’s self-invented rumors and urban legends (like the fictitious 1974 blood transfusion in Switzerland, or snorting his father’s ashes in 2007).  

Wise Man. Visionary. Saint. Then he’s an attentive parent who drives his kids to school and takes out his own trash. He records with Gospel singers and writes “spiritual songs.” He is an erudite collector of rare books, evidenced in 2007 when he fell off his library ladder to be konked on the head by some Encyclopedia Brittanicas (an echo of falling out of a coconut tree in 2006).

“I would rather be a legend than a dead legend.”—Richards.

West (author of LIPSTICK), a long-time Rolling Stones fan, has assembled this compendium of wisdom and humor by Richards. At first the book seems like a die-hard’s attempt to venerate a wild rock star by spoofing motivational writers.  

However, after many pages of laughter and raw truth, I came to respect Richard’s complex humanity and maverick pragmatism. To have survived con artists, bandits, riots, murder attempts, fires, legal frame-ups, numerous accidents (he’s a prony), the music industry, and the quirks of nutty artists, Richards must have something to say.

West’s thread of Richard’s logic weaves together by Chapter Four: Prophet Wear, Urban Guru, Fashion&Style. She writes:

“You have to protect yourself and look for armor, answers, and help in all life’s elements…All fashion is boundary-laden, message-whispering, drenched in politics. Wear the color purple in the Middle Ages when you’re not a member of the church? You’re toast. Wear bright red in the streets in 1770s Boston? Good luck. A neck choker in post-revolutionary France? You’re in league with the guillotine’s departed. Even the cowboy boot was an antagonistic reaction to the Civil War.

“So when it comes to someone as culturally provocative and…visually intense as Keith Richards, there’s definitely more to the picture….he’s a vessel through which songs and lyrics are channeled, he’s also an unwitting visual vessel…images and experiences come through him and are given back…often with polka dots and shark fangs.”

“You don’t find a style. A style finds you.”—Richards.

Chapter Five is a compendium of Richards’ Wit and Wisdom on a myriad of topics:

“Some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to his funeral.”

“Look at Duke Ellington, or Louis Armstrong. Nobody argued about them going on and on.”

“On our first expedition to the United States we noticed a distinct lack of crumpet.”

“There’s really only one song in the whole world, and Adam and Eve hummed it to each other. Everything else is a variation on it in one form or another…”

“Accept the fact that evil is there and deal with it…‘Sympathy for the Devil’ is a song that says, ‘Don’t forget him. If you confront him, then he’s out of a job.’”

“I’ve never turned blue in someone else’s bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners…If you’re going to get wasted, then get wasted elegantly.”

“Musicians don’t start off thinking, ‘We’re rich and famous; let’s get high.’ It’s a matter of making the next gig. Like the bomber pilots—if you’re got to bomb Dresden tomorrow, you get four or five bennies to make the trip and keep yourself together.”

“When a rock star dies, it’s got a very romantic tinge to it, but actually it’s very sordid.”

“Hair’s a fascinating thing. Ask Delilah.”

“Freedom of speech is something everyone is supposed to believe in but seldom does.”

“You never know what the sound’s gonna be like in those stadiums. You’re relying on God, who joins the band every night in one form or another.”

“I don’t like to regret heroin, because I learned a lot from it…It is something I went through and dealt with…People hate themselves anyway. If it wasn’t smack, they’d hate themselves for eating carrots.”

“Everyone should be born with a guitar—there’d be far less suicides.”

“I’m free of hypochondria, although I’ve got everything else.”

“I think photography is magic. It even made me look good a couple times.”

“Music’s the best communicator…that some major shifts in superpower situations…has an awful lot to do with the last twenty years of music, or music in general…You can build a wall to stop people, but eventually, the music, it’ll cross that wall…look at Joshua and Jericho—made mincemeat of that joint. A few trumpets, you know?”

“Listening to music is an art; it can keep your sanity.”

“Everybody has a talent, but how many get to find what their talent is before they’re sucked into the system? …It usually ends up as their hobby, which is probably what they’re really good at…They’re working their guts out doing something they don’t really like to do…working to get those few hours to spend on their hobby, when that’s the area they should really be working in…If people were doing things they really wanted to do, they’d do it ten times better.”

“Have you noticed that Einstein was right, that time is relative?”

“It’s not easy to get into the Stones. It’s even harder to leave.”

The book closes with a salty chronology and Richards’ recipe for Shepherds Pie. WHAT WOULD KEITH RICHARDS DO? is available in the J.V. Brown Library.