What would Keith Richards do_ - Jessica Pallington West [28]
“The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.”—Schopenhauer
Keith: “Some things get better with age. Like me.”
“Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.”—Thomas Jefferson
Keith: “I’ve got nothing to hide.”
“Death is not an event in life: We do not live to experience death … Eternal life belongs to those who live in the present.”—Wittgenstein
Keith: “Don’t call my coffin.”
CHAPTER FOUR
PROPHET WEAR :
URBAN GURU
FASHION & STYLE
OR: WHEN YOU’RE CONSUBSTANTIAL,
THE CLOTHES MAKE THE
GOD and the MAN
“They are rare, those who imposed their style."
—Yves Saint Laurent
“Style is self-plagiarism."
—Alfred Hitchcock
“You don’t find a style. A style finds you."
—Keith Richards
You may be thinking, “You’ve got to be kidding."
Or: “You’re talking about fashion and style when it comes to the path of enlightenment and accepting a prophet into your life as a guide? How shallow can you be?"
Very shallow.
There are sharks and jellyfish swimming in the shallow end of the waters, not just in the deep end. You have to protect yourself and look for armor, answers, and help in all life’s elements.
Anyone who views the human animal’s outer shell of clothing and adornment as merely a frivolous layer of icing and vanity is kidding themselves. Fashion has always been a snarling, complicated language. Don’t listen to the language, and the outcome can be deadly. If someone with a blue-streaked face, circa 25,000 B.C., went beyond the tribal boundaries and ended up in the yellow-streaked zone, it was all over. All fashion is boundary-laden, message-whispering, drenched in politics. Wear the color purple in the Middle Ages when you’re not a member of the church? You’re toast. Wear bright red in the streets in 1770s Boston? Good luck. A neck choker in postrevolutionary France? You’re in league with the guillotine’s departed. Even the cowboy boot was an antagonistic reaction to the Civil War.
So when it comes to someone as culturally provocative and, let’s face it, visually intense as Keith Richards, there’s definitely more to the picture than just some Brit with a penchant for eyeliner, opting for a look a bit to the left of Young Republican.
For a man whose life has been so fraught with run-ins—the law, the press, sleazy managers, drugs, Chuck Berry—it is inevitable that the outer visual shell has some teeth. We all wear the scars of our battles.
And just as Keith maintains he’s a vessel through which songs and lyrics are channeled, he’s also an unwitting visual vessel for the historic (and personal) times within which his body has moved and breathed and snorted. It’s the polyester-and-leather version of the “antenna.” Images and experience come through him and are given back. And when he gets them back, they’re often with polka dots and shark fangs.
Sometimes there’s a residue of a doctor’s diagnosis in what gets translated as “fashion.” Kurt Cobain’s grunge look came about partly because he was so consumed by insecurity that he hid behind ill-fitting clothes. Bob Dylan’s dark sunglasses: not just about being groovy. He also had a vision problem. Issues of exhibitionism and insecurity get tallied in for Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. And we don’t have to get into the maybes regarding Michael Jackson.
With Keith, there’s some trouble at the doctor’s office that gets translated as well. There’s the addict. There’s the hounded, hunted man on the run. The guy who was given to shyness, who needed to wield a bicycle chain to get across town as a kid. The man who had a longstanding battle with authority and was given to bursts of violence, kicking the occasional asshole in the teeth when needed.
The personal battle created a visual armor—spiked hair, eyeliner, shark’s-tooth earring, Middle Eastern soldier’s scarf, leopard prints, hair tchotchkes, head schmatas, skull rings, handcuffs—all blended into a shell, a battlefield uniform to hold up against the world. As Machiavelli wrote, “Hence it comes about that all armed prophets