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Life: Keith Richards - Keith Richards
by sandp1
Living in an age obsessed with celebrity we seem to be awash with (auto)biographies from people whose only claim to fame is the fact that they are famous and who realistically struggle to fill an average size book with anything of any real worth. Devoid of real life experiences and lacking any insight into character these mercifully thin ... tomes are often painful to read and always destined for the bargain bin.
Fortunately this is not one of those books, coming in at a hefty 547 pages plus index this biography still gives the impression that it's only scratched the surface of what has been by anyone's standards a life lived to the full. And while this could have been simply a stringing together of anecdotes and an exercise in name-dropping it's actually more of a journey as we follow Keith from his humble beginnings in Dartford through to becoming, arguably, one of the world's greatest rock stars.
The writing style is informal (expect some swearing - not excessive) and reflects the way that Richards talks and relates to life - don't expect politically correct terms when he's referring to women or his drug experiences to be glossed over. But likewise don't expect a misogynistic view or tales glorifying drug taking - this is the story of a life told in straightforward terms by someone who's tackled life straight on. Occasionally he brings in others to recount stories or tales and this works as a good device to avoid an eternal repetition of "I did this", "I did that".
And what a life it's been. For one man to have fitted so much into his 67 (and counting) years is incredible, as Keith himself says "For many years I slept, on average, twice a week. This means that I have been conscious for at least three lifetimes." And who am I to doubt his calculations? It would seem to be the only way he could have done everything he has and still be going strong.
This biography, and Keith's life, can in reality be seen as a number of contiguous, complimenting and conflicting love stories - Keith and Doris, Keith and Music, Keith and Mick, Keith and his Women, Keith and Drugs.
KEITH AND DORIS
Doris is Keith's mum and instilled into him a love of music from an early age, playing tracks by Ella Fitzgerald, Big Bill Broonzy and the like - "My ears would have gone there anyway, but my mum trained them to go to the black side of town without her even knowing it".
Throughout the book she's there in the background, washing clothes for the Rolling Stones whilst demonstrating washing machines, bringing up his daughter Angela for 20 years, making sure Keith and the X-Pensive Winos actually do some work in the recording studio, right up to the final pages of the book where she lays dying but can still comment on Keith's guitar playing.
KEITH AND MUSIC
What I really learnt from this book was how much Keith loves his music both in his head and in his heart. Whether he's letting the songs come to him through the ether or taking a technical approach to guitar playing in order to understand how sounds interact, it's obvious that he just 'gets' music.
Keith - "It's totally subconscious, unconscious or whatever. The radar is on whether you know it or not. You cannot switch it off. You hear this piece of conversation from across the room.............That's a song. It just flows in."
I remember in the 70s my dad had a copy of Rolled Gold (a Decca cash cow 'Best of') and the sleeve notes referred to the Stones' 'strangely tuned guitars' - it's only now that I've read this book that I understand what they were talking about. In his quest for the perfect sound Keith was introduced to 'open tuning' and subsequently has played on guitars with only five strings. This is written in such an interesting and loving way that even I (as a non-muso) sort of understand the principle!
KEITH AND MICK
Mick is like the brother that Keith never had. The papers picked up on their deteriorating relationship (and the size of Mick's todger) in reviews of this book but the reality is much more than that. They need each other to develop the music that ultimately works best for them both. Life gets in the way of the relationship in the form of women, Keith's use of drugs, Mick's subsequent control of the Stones and developing 'Lead Vocalist Syndrome' but beneath it all Keith recognises that they need each other like brothers. Like brothers they love each other, but that doesn't mean that they always have to like each other.
Keith (on Jagger wanting to be more like Bowie) - "Why would you want to be anyone else if you're Mick Jagger? Is being the greatest entertainer in show business not enough?..........It's fascinating. I can't figure it out"
KEITH AND WOMEN
This book isn't a 'kiss and tell'. There is mention of groupies but it would be fair to say that if Keith was given the choice of sex, drugs or rock 'n' roll he would take them in reverse order every time. The two big love affairs are with Anita Pallenberg and Patti Hansen both of which are revealed in some detail here.
His time with Anita starts with him 'stealing' her from Brian Jones, we then follow their adventures with drugs and each other until their life together begins its decent into a private hell - the death of their son, Anita's drug problems, the death of her boyfriend playing Russian roulette.
With Patti the route is reversed somewhat with the difficulties that had to be overcome with her family - would you want a Rolling Stone to marry your daughter? - before their relationship blossomed into the family life that continues to this day.
KEITH AND DRUGS
This book doesn't shy away from tackling Keith relationship with drugs, indeed it begins with a drugs bust in the 70s, but it doesn't overtly glamorise drugs either. For all the descriptions of staying up for days on end, the insights that drugs give and the fellowship of the druggy, there are also accounts of friends dying, getting away from deals gone wrong and the nightmare of going cold turkey (more than once).
This book recognises the influence that drugs have had on Keith and his life but it records them as fact, something that you would expect in a biography (and on the off chance that any Disney executives are reading this - just because of all the drug references in this book are you really going to drop Keith from the next Pirates of the Caribbean movie? Grow up and grow some.)
IN SUMMARY
This book is recommended to anyone who has even a passing interest in music. Whether you like the Rolling Stones or not is immaterial, this is a book about life, love, mistakes, relationships and, ultimately, contentment.
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Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King - Lisa Rogak
by Jake Speed
Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King was written by Lisa Rogak and published in 2009. It's an unofficial biography of the one man book industry and horror writer and tells the story of how a geeky nobody living in a trailer with no money became the best selling author of the 20th century. I haven't read much of King's later ... work but I remember reading the short stories and some of the Bachman books when I was at school. The book of his I really love is Danse Macabre, a non-fiction work where King talks about the horror genre and old films and television shows he remembers. It was probably that book that persuaded me to take this out of the library and learn a bit more about King because he's very likeable and interesting in it. I did notice though that I was familiar with a lot of stuff here from King's own autobiographical ramblings in the introductions to his older books and also passages in Danse Macabre. King says in Danse Macabre that when he was four he witnessed one of his friends being killed by a train and came home in such a state of shock he repressed the memory for years. This is repeated here but there is reasonable amount of stuff I didn't know, like how his father abandoned the family when King was a child. Apparently, he said he was just nipping out to the shop and never returned and this trauma was a major theme of King's work.
The biography is framed around the books and contains many quotes from the subject throughout. 'America needs Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Ronald McDonald, but it needs a bogeyman too,' says King. 'Alfred Hitchcock's dead, so I got the job for a while.' King's mother Ruth was somewhat bewildered by his love of the gruesome (and eventually banned) EC horror comics of the fifties but they were a major influence on King as a child and later as a writer. 'Someday, I'm going to write this junk,' he said to his mother when she complained about these lurid comics he was always reading. On the whole, this is probably a slightly disappointing read and has a somewhat perfunctory air. It feels very second hand in terms of its sources and there is much here that might already be familiar. It's interesting though to dwell on the origins of King's success in the early seventies when he was a teacher living in a mobile home and doing a shift in a laundry. He started writing a book called Carrie and was so dismayed by the results of his labour he threw it in a dustbin. His wife Tabitha fished it out and persuaded him to stick at it. Carrie eventually sold for $400,000 and King was soon a phenomenon in terms of book sales even if critical acclaim was often harder to find.
One of the things I did find quite interesting here was how King is both an insider and an outsider. He came from a poor background and experienced being poor as an adult too but then became an incredibly wealthy and successful man. Despite his fame and money there is still something of the small town nerd about King and he's never been that comfortable in the spotlight. The book suggests that King sees himself this way, still essentially a small town character who doesn't understand why anyone would want to scrutinise him too much or put him on a pedestal. A major section of the book is taken up with King's battles with drink and drugs. I was aware he'd had these problems but I didn't realise it was quite so bad. The biography says that King was adept at portraying alcoholic writers in books because he was one himself and he was also frequently drunk and stoned when he directed the film Maximum Overdrive in the eighties. This was an adaption of one of King's stories and about trucks and cars coming to life and trying to run down people or something. Anyone who has ever watched some of this film will probably not be surprised to learn that King was a bit out of it at the time!
According to the book, his wife Tabitha got so fed up with his beer and cocaine binges she collected together all the drugs and alcohol she could find in his offices and put it all in a bin which she emptied on the floor in front of him, their children and friends. King got the message and sobered up. Despite the darker side of his personality and life, King comes out of the biography as a genuinely decent person who has done an incredible amount of charity work and has always been generous and supportive to writers and friends. He's made a living trying to scare people but what scares the man himself? According to the book King has a number of fears including the number 13 and flying. 'You have to be a little nuts to be a writer,' says King. 'Because you have to imagine worlds that aren't there.' King describes himself as the 'Big Mac' of writers but has always sought to show he can do more than horror stories and gain some sort of critical acclaim. I haven't read much of King's later work but I gathered here he has managed to do this with some books away from his usual spooky fare.
There is also too a section on the 1999 incident that nearly killed him. He was walking in a country road and a van swerved and hit him (the driver had been trying to control his dog or something), leaving King with severe injuries that he was lucky to survive. 'I was nearly killed by one my own characters,' he later joked. I'm not an expert on Stephen King or his books by any stretch of the imagination but I did notice one or two errors with book titles and the years given for films based on them and there are one or two repetitions at times that make the book feel like it could have done with one more edit. I generally found this readable and interesting but as far as biographies go it's nothing special.
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The Complete Frankie Howerd - Robert Ross
by Jake Speed
Stop tittering. It's bitter out. No missus. Shut yer faces. Oh please yourselves. Ahem. The Complete Frankie Howerd was published in 2001 and written by Robert Ross. This is an entertaining book of about 235 pages and generously packed with stills and photographs. It's split into six sections looking at Frankie Howerd's early years, his ... stage work, television, radio, films, and his final years. I do find Frankie Howerd amusing myself and have a big weakness for that Up Pompeii feature film in particular. I love the way he would always conspiratorially talk to the camera and mock whatever he was in! He did the same act for about 50 years, going in and out of fashion but always staying the same himself. The book begins with a nice prologue. It's the early nineties and, in the twilight of his life, Frankie Howerd (amazingly) is more popular than ever. He's become a big cult figure to students and young people and is playing to packed halls. 'Here was a man born to be Queen. The chief miner at the quip quippery. The King of smutty comedy. A man who looked more at ease in a toga than a crumpled stage suit. A beloved Uncle figure who, somehow, always seemed to tell us the truth. We were happy in his company and happy in the knowledge that we knew the jokes to come. Frankie Howerd could get away with anything. In the autumn of his days, when the Monkhouses, the Hills, the Tarbucks were continually mocked as the ageing dinosaurs of British comedy, Frankie was somehow immune from the brickbats.'
There is a lot of stuff in the book I didn't know. For starters it says that Howerd was several years older than he let on and when he died all the obituaries got his age wrong. He wanted to be an actor when he was young and auditioned for RADA doing a scene from Hamlet. That's pretty funny to picture Frankie Howerd doing Hamlet! Anyway, he failed the audition because of his stuttering, hesitant and nervous presence and manner. He decided if he couldn't be taken seriously as an actor he would be a comedian. His halting delivery and slightly shambolic presence actually worked in his favour when he switched to comedy. Interestingly, Howerd was considered to be something of an alternative comedian himself in the fifties because he was 'theatrically untheatrical' and quite unlike anyone else. 'I was very ordinary,' Howerd is quoted (there are many Howerd quotes culled from interviews). 'I looked as if I walked in from the street.' Despite the bawdy double entendre laden fare that he made his stock in trade, Howerd was apparently a very intelligent and shy man in real life. He suffered terribly from stage fright at certain times in his career and it cost him work and even made him think about retiring. Howerd is described as the Frank Sinatra of British comedy in the book. He always managed to bounce back into fashion.
Howerd was really out of fashion at one point in the sixties but made a superb comeback when he was booked to appear on That Was The Week That Was. This was the hippest show on television and far from blowing his chance, Howerd was brilliant, delighting the audience by gently mocking the show, David Frost and various politicians in his usual manner. There is a nice section too on perhaps his greatest hour, his part as an anachronistic Roman slave in the stage show A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. This was more or less the character he later played in Up Pompeii and Howerd was in his element, receiving glowing reviews. The book explains that the part was played by Zero Mostel on Broadway and when it was agreed to put it on in Britain the Americans had to come over to approve the lead casting. They watched Howerd in a panto in Coventry (!) and thought he was wonderful, giving him the seal of approval immediately. The book points out that while he is often tagged as a 'Carry On' star, Howerd only actually appeared in two Carry Ons. There is though a lot of good stuff about these two films (Carry on Doctor & Carry On Up the Jungle).
Although they were keen to get Howerd, the Carry On producers were slightly worried that he might play against their regular team or unbalance the film. There are a few letters here exchanged between Howerd and Carry On producer Peter Rogers discussing this. Howerd promises he won't 'play outside' the team. It all turned out fine in the end with Howerd slotting into the films quite nicely. The author says Howerd was payed more than the Carry On regulars because he was considered a much bigger star. Why were there so many Carry Ons? Well, because they were made so cheaply they were always in profit after only a couple of days in UK cinemas. Howerd replaced Kenneth Williams in Carry On Up the Jungle. Their scenes together in Carry On Doctor were minimised because it was felt they both mined a vaguely similar territory of camp superiority and priggish reactions. It's also interesting to read about the Carry On television specials they made in the seventies for Christmas. Williams refused to appear in these but Howerd was in a few. They are obviously too dated to broadcast now or something because I can't remember ever seeing them repeated anywhere.
I really enjoyed the film section here which devotes two or three pages to each film Howerd was in and is very well written. I love the section on the Up Pompeii film. The author says this started the seventies system of television sitcoms being turned into feature films for the domestic market. Steptoe and Son, On the Buses and Rising Damp all had feature films made. The Up Pompeii film (and the 'Up' series of films that followed) were incredibly risque compared to the Carry Ons and featured copius amounts of nudity in amongst the innuendo (and Hammer stars too like Madeline Smith and Julie Ege in very few clothes). Great photo here by the way of Howerd and Vincent Price posing together. Up Pompeii and The Abominable Dr Phibes were both shooting at Elstree at the same time and the two posed for a snap together in the costumes of the characters they were playing!
The Complete Frankie Howerd is a lot of fun and written with a great deal of affection and care. The author stresses this is not a biography but a celebration and analysis of Howerd's career. It's really interesting to read about all the television specials and things that you've never seen or heard of and the range of stills is very impressive. This is a pleasant book on the whole that I enjoyed flipping through quite a bit.
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