“There's something beautifully friendly and
elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little
world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the
others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for
a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazz__that's
the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.”—
Keith
Richards with James Fox, Life (2010)
In 2004, I read predictions of the life expectancy of prominent musicians/singers by American gerentologist David Demko. In one case, he was, sadly, not far wrong (e.g., Whitney
Houston did not live past middle age), while he was considerably off in another
(the guess for Michael Jackson—75—missed by a quarter century).
But I burst
out laughing when Demko gauged the prospects for Keith Richards: “He should have passed away at 52. I'm not sure how
he does it, but he defies all conventional wisdom.”
But then again, the guitarist and co-songwriter of The Rolling Stones has been defying
“all conventional wisdom” his entire adult life.
It is impossible to imagine that Richards was born
75 years ago today in Dartford, England. Yes, for many of us growing up in the
late Sixties and early Seventies, it doesn’t seem so long ago that he was in
the vanguard of a group of musicians who epitomized rebellious youth.
But these days, as Rich Cohen recalled in an April 2016 article for Vanity Fair, “There’s reassurance in talking to Keith. He
stands for survival. There’s nothing you’ve done he’s not overdone—nothing
you’ve suffered he’s not survived. Here is Methuselah, perhaps not infinitely
wise but infinitely experienced. He can teach you how to remain dignified in a
fallen age.”
There was a time, growing up, when Richards
represented those aspects of rock ‘n’ roll I wanted to wish away—the
dissipation, the aimlessness, the (literally) wasted opportunities for
greatness.
But over time, not only did the legacy of the
Rolling Stones come to seem more durable, but my appreciation for Richards as a
musician increased tenfold. That wasn’t merely a matter of watching the group’s
electrifying concert clips, but reading Richards’ memoir Life, which gives the most vivid idea of a musician’s abiding
passion—his instrument—of any account I've read in the growing literature about rock ‘n’
roll.
I now feel that, though bandmate and songwriting
collaborator Mick Jagger might supply The Stones’ flash, it is Richards who
brings the fire.
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