Under the bright and shiny Christmas tree, with all its magic and beauty, was a gift I shall treasure."Life," the new Keith Richards book, is a reminder of all those things we should and should not do.
No, it has nothing to do with his various addictions or conquests. Instead, it's a reminder that the only way to make your mark matter is to etch it on your own terms.
Richards is an uncompromising, brilliant guitarist/songwriter. He was born during one of Germany's lethal bombardments of Great Britain during World War II. One of Hitler's bombs, the story goes, landed on his bed. Or something like that, so the story goes.
Now, The Rolling Stones have been the biggest, baddest rock 'n' roll outfit for decades. Nobody does it like Keith and the boys, nobody ever will.
They ask no quarter, nor give any. They are and always have been uncompromising, living and working in a world where you're only as good as your last record, where the pressures for commercial success are overwhelming, beating down even the noblest of heart and talent. The corporate suits did it to Dylan, The Beatles, Springsteen, but not the Stones. They never suffered from the corporate poison that can ruin purity and kill the spirit when a bunch of guys with eyes on a corner office in a big glass building force their will on others, watering down their talent, squelching their creativity, forcing them to compromise their souls for the sake of listeners or sales or whatever other benchmark they impose to further homogenize the culture, play it safe and not offend anybody so they can march to the head of the class and trade their soul for a nice fat bonus and bleeding ulcer.
Not the Stones. Well, maybe Mick Jagger, who has really never stepped too far over the line, but not Richards who is strong as a neat tumbler of tequila.
"If I start to think about 'What do they want to hear?' then I say 'I'm out of here.' That's not the way I've ever done it. The only times people have liked my stuff is when I've done it because I like it," he once told an interviewer.
Life...its purpose...its meaning...a question for geater minds?
Nah. It's easily explained in one word: Truth, which rings throughout Richards' book.
This rebel guitar slinger reminds us that our passions are ours and ours alone; that we know who we are, what we are; and that unless we find our passion, follow it, nurture it, develop it, life is just the passage of time. Simple, really. Indulge your passion and hold it close to your heart. Kick the rest of it to the curb because it's all transient bullshit anyway.
It's imperative to remember all this, especially for some of us who feel like we have gone to the well one time too many and emptied it until it is pointed out to us -- thank you, dear -- that the well wasn't really empty, we have just been drawing from the wrong one.
Oh yeah, it's the purpose, not the result that matters; the reason, the passion, not some toxic notion attached to convention or benchmarks or, dear God! expectations.
It's about not playing it safe, it's about realizing that compromise is for cowards and that you really do need to piss people off now and then because it stirs the passions and without passion, life is not worth living. Even if you are the one being pissed on it all evens out in the end anyway, right?
The book is, of course, a cool historical document for rock 'n' roll fans, but it really goes beyond the 12-bar blues that the Stones have learned to turn inside out; beyond the sex-and-drugs-and-rock 'n'roll cliche that comprise so many books about musicians; beyond the glitter and glam.
It is about life, from the gut to the gutter which means it is, at times, gritty, while at others, funny as hell.
I know why I got this book at this time and will be ever-grateful.
Now if I can only get that five-string, open G tuning thing down right...
