What would Keith Richards do_ - Jessica Pallington West [8]
16. THE CREATIVE INHALE—BREATHE IN WHAT YOU LOVE.
“I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared. It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”
Snorting your father’s ashes. Wow. I wish I had thought that one up.
When the British magazine New Music Express asked Keith in 2007 what the strangest thing he’d ever snorted was, this comment about Dad was greeted with a storm of shock and horror.
Keith quickly recanted—said he was just joking.
Then he recanted again: Yes, it was true, he said, and he’d only pretended he’d made it up so as not to upset his dying mother. Maybe he didn’t want Mum to think he was planning to do the same to her.
It’s true that a lot of what Keith has creatively inhaled over the years, beyond Dad, is within the category of “illegal substances” or “recreational pharmaceuticals,” but he’s also always exuberantly inhaled that which sustains him: music, family, friends, snooker, laughter.
According to Harold Schechter in a New York Times editorial, father snorting is not such a far-fetched notion. It comes from a custom of funerary cannibalism, which “springs from a profound and very human impulse: the desire to incorporate the essence of a loved one into your own body … the belief that when someone close to us dies, the person lives on inside us—that he or she becomes an undying part of our own deepest selves."
Maybe we should all partake of this form of inhalation. And often.
Breathe in what you love.
17. BE TOUGH, BE BRAVE, AND DON’T GIVE IN TO THE DICTATES OF AUTHORITY.
“Ever since I left school, nobody has ever heard a ‘Yes sir’ from me. Apart from a few exceptions: in court and in jail.”
It may not be as easy for all of us to get by with this assertion—but in our hearts, we can do it. The only dictate you need to listen to is that which comes from within.
If you’re someone whose inner meter tells you that you’re made to stay up late, stay up late. Defying authority is not a matter of spray-painting subway cars (although it helps). It’s a matter of making yourself the real authority—as set forth in the first and second Keith rules of order—and not buckling to what others say should be. And within that, of course, know your limits. You can only go so far with certain types of defiance before they come back and get you. Don’t get scared. As Keith says, “I don’t get afraid. I get angry." There’s more energy in anger. Just ask Johnny Rotten.
18. VALUE FAMILY AND FRIENDS, DESPITE THE NUTTINESS THEY CAN PROVIDE.
“The only way you can be like me is to have a good family.”
On first glance, this would seem a shockingly un-Keith sentiment. The Outlaw? Waxing sentimental about family? But this is from the guy who was once the big-eared little tyke who went into a panicked state whenever he couldn’t find his mummy in the pickup location after school was out. It’s also the same guy who, when in prison, wrote one letter while staring up at the little square window of sky: “Dear Mum, Don’t worry …”
One wouldn’t guess that Keith Richards is a mama’s boy, but facts are facts. It ended up being a good thing. He treated his mother well. And after twenty years of estrangement from his father, they reconnected, became close friends and domino partners. Keith’s father, former common-law wife, current wife, and children were all there at the concerts. His marriage is nearly thirty years running. He has never revealed anything intimate about his children’s lives.
And while he’s certainly not been the traditional father, or husband, or son, his family always knows where to find him and knows that his love is always there.
A word to the wise from Keith: Look