Free Moranthology by Caitlin Moran Page B

it—I’m not going to The Other Place, let’s face it, HARGH!”
    We’re here today because—having resolutely, persistently and, in many ways, unfeasibly—not died, Richards has finally published his autobiography, Life. When Richards announced the project, he was subject to a massive bidding war that ended with Richards getting a £4.8m advance—acknowledgment of the fact that, barring Bowie or McCartney deciding to write their stories, Richards’ was the motherlode, in terms of understanding that most incredible of decades—the sixties—from the inside; recounted by one of the very people pinballing the psychedelic charabanc off the bounds of “decent” society.
    â€œHave you read it?” he asks—trying to look casual, but unable to suppress an incongruous note of eagerness.
    â€œOh God, yes,” I say. “Oh man, it’s a total hoot. Really, really amazing.”
    â€œOh good,” he says, relaxing. “You know, you start off thinking you can spin a few yarns—and by the time you get to the end of it, it’s turned into something much more. One memory triggers another, and before you know it, there’s 600 rounds per second coming out.”
    â€œDid you want to write your version because other books on you, and the Stones, had got it wrong?” I ask.
    â€œI read Bill Wyman’s book, but after three or four chapters—where he’s going [assumes dull, priggish Wyman monotone], ‘And by that point, I only had £600 left in Barclays Bank’—I was like, ‘Oh, Bill.’ You know what I mean? You’re far more interesting than that; do me a favor. And Mick attempted it once, and ended up giving the money back. It was ten, fifteen years ago, and he’d keep ringing up and going [does Mick impression], ‘’ere, what were we doing on August 15th nineteen-sixty-somefink?’ I’d be like ‘Mick, you’re writing it. I can’t remember.’ And knowing Mick, there would have been a morass of blank chapters—because there would have been a lot of stuff he would have wanted to put to one side, hur hur.”
    Richards is dismissive of Stones books written by non-Stones—claiming the authors would have been ‘too scared’ to write the truth: “Who’s really going to put Mick Jagger, or Keith Richards, up against a wall and say, ‘I demand you answer this’?” he says, eyes suddenly flashing black.
    â€œBecause, you know . . .” he takes a drag on his fag. “You end up dead like that.”
    The reason Life attracted such a bidding war is because the life of Keith Richards and the Stones is one that—even in today’s modern, anything-goes pop-cultural climate—takes in a still-astonishing amount of, for wont of a better word, scandal. “Would You Let Your Daughter Marry a Rolling Stone?”, the Redlands bust, Marianne Faithfull in her fur rug, “Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?”, the still-controversial death of Brian Jones, the Hell’s Angels running amok at Altamont, the Marianne Faithfull/Mick Jagger/Anita Pallenberg/Richards four-way love-rectangle; numerous arrests, heroin, cocaine, acid, whisky, infidelity, groupies, Margaret Trudeau, riots, billions of dollars, and four decades of sweaty fans, screaming without end.
    And, at the center of it all, arguably the greatest rock ’n’ roll band that ever existed. “Gimme Shelter,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Wild Horses,” “Brown Sugar,” “Start Me Up,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Satisfaction” — each one with the ability to alone answer the question, “Mummy—what is rock ’n’ roll?,” and, when taken en masse, the reason why Keith Richards is referred to, almost factually, as “The Living