What would Keith Richards do_ - Jessica Pallington West [18]
WHAT WOULD KEITH DO?
Inner demons.
Where do you look for the answer on this one?
Here, some help can be found by looking back to the cautionary tale named Brian Jones.
Jones, the founding member of the Stones who died at age twenty-seven from “misadventure,” having drowned under mysterious circumstances in a swimming pool, had, according to Keith, a few too many demons—more than should be the daily requirement—which ultimately undid him.
Brian’s demons ganged up on him, got him in the pool, wrestled him down, and won. It was just a matter of time before they won, and everyone knew it. Brian’s demons fed off each other, multiplied and divided, ultimately took over, and destroyed him. As Keith has said: “Brian was effectively already dead when he died."
We all have an inner Jones. There’s the inner and outer Mick, which acts as an organic yin-yang balancing act. And there’s Charlie, the drummer within, who keeps you on beat and strong. And the Ron Wood—the gregarious sidekick to your larger self, who illuminates your good points. There’s the Bill Wyman, the circumspect appendage that you somehow need but that might fall off at any time. And then there’s Brian, the part of yourself that is more trouble than needed, that will eventually be sacrificed to make the rest of you work. Think of Brian as your appendix.
Brian is symbolic on many levels, from the petty to the sublime: from the dangers of being blond in the Stones to the danger of being slain by your inner demons. Brian did not take time to know himself. Or his limits. And in the end it killed him.
“There is a demon in me, but I only own up to having one of them. Brian probably had forty-five more … He was so self-important, maybe because he was so short … The thing with Brian was that as soon as he identified one, another would crop up. I’ve got just the one demon but he’s bad enough … My policy is to identify one and deal with that.”
That is the Keith solution: Get it down to one. Also, try not to be short.
It might take some work—some mentally turning your demons into clay, then squashing them together into one lumpy demon— but you’ll be better able to eliminate them that way. Think of it as crumpling up paper, or compressing a mass in a trash compactor, down to a small, puny size.
Once you’re on the asphalt with the demon, “It’s a matter of looking him in the face.” And don’t be afraid. Remember this Keithism: “The devil doesn’t bother me, it’s God that pisses me off. Him and his rain.” The devil is an amateur.
IX. FRUSTRATION, ANGER
And: How Do You Release It?
Those inner demons are one thing. But then there’s that other crap that slags around within. We can feel it with a person or a situation. Or with things going on out in the world, in the higher realms that are those metaphorical Rolling Stones. Sometimes it’s with something as pathetic as an object. A pencil can easily do the trick on the wrong day. When frustration and anger come calling, what do you do?
WHAT WOULD KEITH DO?
This:
1972: Keith and saxophonist Bobby Keys hurl a misbehaving television out the window of a hotel balcony and exult in the moment as it’s demolished several stories down, smashing like a box of lo mein on impact with the concrete. (They were good boys about it, though: very careful that no one was standing below, and that it was aimed at the garbage bins.)
Frustration has to go somewhere. If, according to the teachers of spirituality, material objects are secondary to living things, then, dammit, make them the outlet for anger and frustration, rather than living things. Choose from any of the following: TVs. Toasters. Chairs. Boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal.
Another thing you might try is physical release via music. In living life the Keith Richards way,