Rolling Stones Against the World: The Autobiography Of Keith Richards...Life Itself...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - Most of the time, we don't have time for the rebels of the world. It's easy to brand them outlaws, fools, ornery or simply publicity hounds. There are many in that museum of delight and anger located somewhere in the darker alleys of your brain. Some people see the positives in Charles Manson, in Ted Bundy and in Pancho Villa. But none of them ever brought you great music.

Keith Richards, guitarist for The Rolling Stones, did.

If ever an autobiography had mountains of interesting tidbits and outright confirmations of a host of illegal activity and the debauchery of runaway passion, it was this guy's story. He offers it loud and proud in his book, titled simply: Life.

Richards nears his 70th year on the planet, but his reputation lives as if born yesterday. The Stones always have been tagged as being the ultimate bad boy band. Vocalist Mick Jagger, characterized in the book as a trusted and untrustworthy bandmate, isn't far behind in the ledger filled with strange and bizarre exploits that followed this British band from the moment it first left the slums of London for the adulation of America.

Written in cahoots with rock 'n' roll writer James Fox, Life is an eye-opening cataloguing of booze, drugs and women, enjoyed before, during and after concerts. It is also a looksee into the manner in which the band pushed itself onto the largest stage in the world, and how it resisted a "clean-up" ala The Beatles, instead insisting on being the outlaw band that started as young punks and lived to see old age.

Richards spares few details in the 547-page book, writing openly about an affair involving his mother that broke his heart, the father he abandoned for four decades and later brought back into his life, the many women who played varying parts in his evolving life and even glimpses into such moments when a fall led to cranial surgery friends and family said he'd never survive.

But survive he did. The tale is one big glob of short pieces to do with his life as a kid and with being, in the end, an elder statesman of rock music. Richards runs through his ever-brief relationships with a number of pretty women he says never should have been handled by someone like him, the son of a dirt-poor family who turned himself over to the guitar and exploded a unique sound on the world. He writes viciously about Anita Pallenberg, the mother of his older son, Marlon, as if writing about some girl he met, bedded often and then flitted-on, away into the arms of some other high-society groupie. Indeed, he laughs off the sentence where he says Pallenberg, once a top model and actress in Europe, and also a bedmate of Mick Jagger, saw her beauty fade horribly, describing her as an old grandma in the book's back pages.

He drank and did his share of drugs. Cocaine, heroin, that stuff. He was busted in Arkansas and Canada and in his native country, but the most time he ever spent in jail was a day, thanks to the band's sharp lawyers and a few fans. Even the surgeon who performed that life-saving operation throws him his memory of the episode, openly noting his fondness of the band's music ahead of the surgery.

Where The Beatles are known as the band that started it all in that so-called British Invasion, The Stones have taken pride, writes Richards, in never selling out, never bending for convention, never going on stage with everybody wearing the same clothes. It was an all-out run at freedom, at throwing stuff in the face of what stood for civilized behavior, at what was expected by local authorities in the calmer, early 1960s. It is The Stones that arrived with something to say and said it without giving an inch. There was, according to the book, no interest in writing or singing Penny Lane.

Something good comes out of being a purist. Bending to laws, rules or convention eats at the root of creativity. And in the music business, it is easy to bend. Look at The Monkees, a completely manufactured, made-for-TV band. You'd never see any of The Stones in such scenes. "Here, they come, walking down the street..." Maybe tearing down the street, but not walking. Musicians get a break from society, of course. Willie Nelson, admired by Richards in his book, has more publicized pot busts than any man alive, but he finds a way out of those tight squeezes. Creative license is granted so long as the artist doesn't push it, doesn't take it to the press in a fighting, bitching manner. There are several incidents related to that in this book, times when Richards got a little help from a long list of influential fans.

The book is his memory of his life. A writer working a biography on him, able to seek sources other than one brain, could write a different version of this man's life. This is a memoir, and it stands as such. There are enough details, however, to make it seem believable.

Humor moves through the pages, as well.

The reader learns that Stones bassist Bill Wyman's real name is William Perks, and that drummer Charlie Watts once got so bugged by Jagger calling him "my drummer" that he bolted for Jagger's neck and almost killed him. Brian Jones, the founder of the group and also a guitarist, is characterized as a 5-foot dictator who saved The Stones from internal anarchy by drowning during their early years. In fact, it was Jones who brought Anita Pallenberg onto the scene, loved her and then lost her to Richards and then to Jagger.

One could say with some assurance that the easy-passing of Pallenberg around was similar to the boys passing a joint around the room. In a sentence, that seems to be the assessment Richards gives of his life and times with the world's most dangerous band - one toke for me, and one for you.

It's an okay book, one I recommend for those moments when all the jabbering on TV pisses you off, or when an annoying cold knocks you into bed for a few days...

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