This isn't so much a review, more of a note I suppose. I'm just beginning Keith Richards autobiography Life. I'm not a Stones fan, so I didn't really know what to expect. I heard a positive review on NPR, so I have high expectations going in. At a little less than 100pages in to this 500+ page tome and I'm happy to report that I have not been disapointed. Which is lovely, especially because the last rock&roll biography I read, Cherie Currie's Neon Angel, was so horrifyingly awful it gave me the shakes. Seriously, do not read that book. Her writing style wasn't so bad, but the content was all drugs and horrific violence-Not pleasant. Icky Icky Ick... now I'm remembering Neon Angel.. pardon me while I go shower and attempt to disinfect my brain.
So..... Keith Richards really has to make up for the Neon disaster. Or else, be the last musician autobiography I ever read. As I said, I am, so far, pleasantly surprised. Richards can be very poetic when discussing music, especially his first introductions to the Blues. He gives credit where credit is due with paragraphs on the greatness of Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Muddy Waters, and what they meant to him.
'The silence is your canvas, that's your frame, that's what you work on; don't try and deafen it out. That's
what "Heartbreak Hotel" did to me. It was the first time I'd heard something so stark.'
My only complaint (and its not even a real complaint) is that at times I feel I need a British to American dictionary to figure out what the hell Richards is saying. For example, at one point he says that two of his aunts were living together and his mother said, in a whisper, that they were 'on the game'. On the game? I have no idea what that means... could be anything! Oh, What do you know, thanks to the wonders of the internet, I just found a dictionary of British slang here. Apparently 'On the Game' = Prostitution. I'm going to have to bookmark that page for future inquiries, incase I need to decode Life a little more.
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