From the BBC news website this morning: "Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has claimed he snorted the ashes of his late father during a drugs binge.
"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow," he told NME."
Now I've always had the suspicion that behind the hard-living, high-rolling, head-banging facade of most of those 70s dinosaurs of rock lie some really mind-blowingly stupid people and now I think I have the proof.
What was he trying to prove with this? "I am more decadent than anybody else"? Perhaps "I don't adhere to the small-time taboos of the little people"? How about "Hey, look at me - what a raging twat." The NME readers will surely be bemused. Will there be many who aill applaud him "Yeah! Go Keith, you old rocker!"? Some, I'm sure. But probably not many.
Maybe he did it, maybe he didn't. His publicist, who's probably scanning the appointments pages or leafing through her contacts book as I write, insists that she can't believe anyone took the claim seriously. If he did it, he's as addled as the most addled addled thing in the history of being addled. And frankly, if he made it up, that really smacks of desperation. A pensioner, clinging to the remnants of his bad-boy reputation; a pensioner who falls out of a tree when drunk or stoned. Frankly it's very disappointing. I remember Keith Richard when I was a child, when he was gorgeous; etiolated and wan but wiry and devastatingly glamorous.
I went to see the Stones at Wembley years ago and they were already past their best. My brother made jokes then about Zimmer frames. And here we are, some fifteen years on, and they're still churning out music, going on tour and bragging about excesses. I have some sympathy with the Who's position. But I don't want them to die - I just want them to retire. The music's rubbish, the debauchery is embarrassing and they're not fooling anybody.
Hang up the leathers and the headband, Uncle Keith, and have a nice cup of tea.
No comments:
Post a Comment