Talk to Life like its author wrote you back.
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What it argues
Keith Richards's Life was written with journalist James Fox and published when Richards was 66, after more than fifty years with the Rolling Stones. It is one of the better rock memoirs on the grounds that Richards is genuinely interested in music — in the mechanics of guitar playing, the theory behind the riffs, the specific ways American blues found its way to a generation of working-class British teenagers in the early 1960s — and not merely in his own legendary status. The book is also unusually candid about both the pleasures and the genuine costs of his years as a heroin addict, without performing either glamour or regret.
The early chapters are the most historically interesting. Richards grew up in Dartford, Kent, in postwar working-class austerity; his grandmother was a musician and an early formative influence; he discovered American blues through mail-order records and obsessive radio listening in a way that still sounds like revelation. He reconnected with Mick Jagger on a train platform in 1961, both of them carrying blues and R&B records, and the story of how two art-school kids translated American music into something that eventually eclipsed its sources is one of the more compelling origin stories in popular culture.
What it gets right
- 1.
The specific tuning Richards developed for open-G five-string guitar — removing the bass string and tuning to G-D-G-B-D — enabled the chord shapes behind the Stones' most recognizable riffs, including 'Honky Tonk Women' and 'Brown Sugar.'
- 2.
The Stones' longevity came partly from treating the band as a democratic institution with clear roles, even when relationships were strained. Richards describes the band as a structure that outlasted any individual's mood or ambition.
- 3.
American blues musicians — Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry — were the primary source. Richards and Jagger were essentially trying to preserve and transmit music they thought would otherwise be lost.
What it covers
Who wrote it
Keith Richards is a guitarist, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones, formed in London in 1962. He has co-written most of the band's catalog with Mick Jagger and is widely regarded as one of the most influential guitarists in rock music. Richards was born in Dartford, Kent, in 1943 and attended Sidcup Art College before the Stones' early success. He has survived numerous overdoses, arrests, and physical accidents that have become part of rock mythology. Life, written with journalist James Fox, was a number-one bestseller in the UK and United States.
