As anyone with half a brain and persistent hacking cough knows, today is a very special day. Today Little, Brown and Company publishes Life, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards' autobiography as told to/pieced together by British journalist James Fox.
Life has already received a fair amount of media attention; it's excerpted generously in the current issue of Rolling Stone, and Richards was even profiled above Taylor Swift on the front page of this past Sunday's New York Times Arts & Leisure section. In the book, we're told, he talks about Mick Jagger's wang and a few other things.
Rocks Off is still patiently waiting on our review copy, which means we're pacing back and forth between our office and the Press front desk every ten minutes or so. But as someone who is proud to share a birthday with Keef, we've long been a student of his unique brand of wisdom. Luckily, he's never been shy about sharing his feelings.
So until our copy of Life gets here, and for all of you who can't make it to Books a Million or Barnes & Noble until after work, Rocks Off combed the Internet for a few of Richards' choicest musings on life, the universe and everything. Besides "Never keep a dollar past sunset," of course.
ON ASTROLOGY
"I'm Sagittarius, half-man, half-horse, with a license to shit in the street."
ON THE BLUES
"If you don't know the blues, ... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music."
"I say good luck to people who want to emulate me, but they better realize what they're getting into; they better know that there's more to this than attitude. It's about the music; it's about the blues. That's what sustains me."
"I reckon there are three reasons why American R&B stars don't click with British teenage fans. One, they're old; two, they're black; three, they're ugly."
"Nobody ever wondered why the bluesmen were onstage until their old age: Muddy, Howlin' Wolf, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and so on. It's the same with us: Why does a dog lick his balls? Because he can! We play because we can. We do what we have to."
ON ETIQUETTE
"I've never turned blue in someone else's bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners."
ON FAMILY
"I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up in little bits of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared. It went down pretty well and I'm still alive."
ON KEEPING HEALTHY
"When I listen to what I did under the influence - 10 years of work - I don't think it either enhanced or impaired me. It didn't have that much to do with it."
"I'd hate to have to go around thinking of health and shit like that."
"Nobody's got the right to judge over what I am putting into my body, apart from myself."
