HOW KEITH RICHARDS SAVED MY LIFE
April through August of that year was dark. The boyfriend of three years had begun to withdraw. By May, he refused to see me. My mother’s long decline accelerated. She could not get out of bed, yet insisted she was going to throw herself out the window. And in June, I had surgery scheduled – on a hip displaced since birth.
Routine, the doctor assured me. Routine for you, I thought. For me, months of recovery loomed, sans the two adults I assumed I would rely on for support. I was sobbing-in-my-car-sad, and terrified. That’s when Keith showed up to save my life.
Which of us in my generation, class, and race has not been impacted by The Rolling Stones? Their music was a soundtrack to growing up. Their album covers were ubiquitous in the bedrooms friends shared with older siblings. In dorm rooms, my fingers traced the zipper on Sticky Fingers. At an early job, the release of Some Girls’ was cause for adored celebration. Radio play of “As Tears Go By” morphed into “Satisfaction” into college choruses of “Wild Horses” into the late ‘70s sidewalk beat of “Shattered.”
I admit that, while they were everywhere, I had not worshipped the Stones. Not like Cindy in high school, whose professed ambition was to ball Mick. Not like my guy friends who swore allegiance to Brian Jones, Mick Taylor, or Ron Wood. And I’ve never seen the band live — although I almost did when my best friend won a ticket lottery for two seats at Madison Square Garden. Instead, she took a guy called Froggy, whom we never saw again. In truth, though I had
loved Keith’s music before he saved my life, his chipped-tooth grimace, wolf-lean stance, and without-limits persona frightened me.
But I was ready to be fearless, at least in my imagination, when I stumbled on Keith’s autobiography, weeks before surgery. My eyes landed on the audiobook of Life, in my local library, spoken in parts by Keith, Johnny Depp, and actor James Dougherty. From the first gravelly syllables to the last note of tribute to his mum, I was hooked. My car went from crying cage to time capsule as his stories traveled across 1940s post-war London to now. Drugs, sex, deals, groupies, car rides, scrapes with the law, dissents into isolation and illness, rows with the two Micks, bonding with women, meeting musical idols, early deaths of men who followed Keith down the dope road but could not keep up with his iron constitution, which remained unfazed by substances – all resurrected memories of fun. Fun I used to have: simple and nourishing and seemingly banished. And what I loved more than anything in the book was the music talk– the influences, the collaborations, composing, recording, experimenting, riffs captured on cassette, the explanation of the infamous G-open tuning, and the irony of young Brits being touched by and bringing to a world audience the guitar-picking, earth deep, from-the-depths, grumbling, howling American roots music of blues, country, folk, and soul.
Post-surgery, in bed, fittingly stoned on oxycodone, I entered my second Keith phase – YouTube. The Stones have been incessantly documented. I got my Keith hit from endless concert footage, interviews, films, clips – even outtakes of Robert Frank’s infamously banned Cocksucker Blues, as raunchy as it is touted. Early Keith looks shell-shocked; middle Keith, with eyes that are horizontal stitches, is somber, dour, “dangerous” as the late sax-player Bobby Keyes described him. Yet recent Keith smiles impishly, extolling his happiness at still “being
here.” It’s that lit-up grin that emblazoned me with strength, along with his lack of apology. Not one single apology.
I prolonged my fixation well into autumn. After all, my mother was bedridden. The boyfriend was gone. Then again, I was walking. Better than before. Ultimately, other things began to matter as I returned to a healed life, able to move now without hip pain. Yet I will not forget how, in a time of emotional and physical immobility, I was infused with Keith Richard’s debauched joy.
Pamela Gordon is a retired NYC English teacher and a former freelance writer with stints as a theater critic, feature, newsletter, website, and health writer. Her work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, salon.com, Poets & Writers, More magazine, New Times, and Best Short Fiction 2022. When not writing or reading, Pamela swims laps to remind herself that she has a body.