The nostalgia business

The extraordinary thing about rock’n’roll is its longevity.

The extraordinary thing about rock’n’roll is its longevity. When the Rolling Stones started out in the early Sixties, they can hardly have imagined that they would be doing much the same thing, though on a far larger scale, almost half a century later.

If you’re Keith Richards, of course, you are also astonished that you have survived at all. His new autobiography, Life, deserves the plaudits it has received. The honesty, the humour and the man’s passionate love of the music come shining through on almost every page, while his attacks on the vanity and controlling instincts of Mick Jagger often made me laugh out loud.

Casually to let slip that the leering rock’n’roll sex god and serial philanderer has a ‘tiny todger’ is devastating but I also loved the more laconic quips. Take Mick’s first solo album She’s the Boss, when he was trying to carve out a solo career away from his troublesome band-mates (he failed). ‘I’ve never listened to the entire thing all the way through,’ confides Keef, before adding, wickedly, ‘Who has?’

Having kicked heroin and more recently cocaine — though I think it is fair to assume that Keef still likes the occasional drink — Richards says he now ‘leads a gentleman’s life — listen to Mozart, read many, many books’, and there’s a lovely shot of him lying on a chaise-longue in his handsome library and strumming an acoustic guitar. Mind you, even libraries can be a dangerous place when Keef’s around. He was once knocked off his library steps by a cascade of heavy volumes, hit the desk with his head, blacked out and woke up with a punctured lung. Scoring smack from dodgy drug-dealers was nothing like as dangerous.