Life in DC Public Library

Oct 07, 2011 Tony rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-for-bookclub, nonfiction

I'm not a reader of memoirs or biographies, and I'm not a big Rolling Stones fan, so if it weren't for my book club, I would never ever have picked this up. And I think you need to be either a memoir or Stones fan in order to make this 550-page slog worth your while. The issue that always comes up for me when it comes to memoirs is: to what extent are you reacting to the book, and to what extent are you reacting to the life that is the subject of the book? To me, the two seem to be inextricably I'm not a reader of memoirs or biographies, and I'm not a big Rolling Stones fan, so if it weren't for my book club, I would never ever have picked this up. And I think you need to be either a memoir or Stones fan in order to make this 550-page slog worth your while. The issue that always comes up for me when it comes to memoirs is: to what extent are you reacting to the book, and to what extent are you reacting to the life that is the subject of the book? To me, the two seem to be inextricably married and hard to separate.

So, to the extent it's possible to separate them, I found the parts of the book where Richards focuses on the music fairly engaging and insightful. The book is especially strong in the first third, as he details how his family nurtured his interest in music,and how his love of American blues music brought him into contact with all these other people with a similar interest. His account of meeting Mick Jagger on a train station and ogling his record collection is great. And to a certain extent, his accounts of how songs were crafted is pretty interesting (although, I've been told these don't always align with what others present at the creation have recounted). However, I imagine that even these portions will be much more interesting to my friends who play instruments and are in bands than they are to me.

As for the rest of it... well, it just struck me as a fairly typical rock star candid tell-all, replete with all the snide carping and self-mythologizing that comes with the territory. Not to mention, rife with contradictions: drugs never affected me (except when they did), I never pursued women (or rather, "bitches" as he charmingly calls them in much of the book), or kept tallies of my conquests (except when I proceed to name numbers of them), isn't Mick a jerk for moving in on his bandmate's women (unlike me, who stole Anita Pallenberg from Brian Jones), Mick's side project music in the '90s sucked (unlike my awesome band The X-Pensive Winos -- what do you mean you never heard of us?) and on and on and on in endless self-justifications. And that doesn't start to delve into his largely absentee parenting, including not coming back from tour when his infant son dies from SIDS, and then admitting he has no idea where (or whether) the baby was buried -- while making oblique references of blame toward Pallenberg. Race is a whole separate topic for consideration, as he twice appoints himself an honorary black person in describing his brotherhood with poor, southern black people, and later, Rastafarians. And his whole portrayal of himself as some kind of outlaw fighting against authority is pretty pathetic.

So, don't get me wrong, I like the Stones just fine up until about 1970. Their music in the 1970s has some moments, and I can see why others like so much of it, it's just not for me. But what's somewhat ironic is that in the last 30 years, they've been able to build their corporate brand and infrastructure into a hugely profitable machine, while at the same time producing absolutely no noteworthy new music. Richards has been happy to ride that wave of fame and fortune, and more power to him I guess, but that doesn't make his life story worth spending several hours of one's life reading. ...more

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