Write to the Heart of the Matter: Biography

Life
by Keith Richards
with James Fox

As you are aware, I love audio books. I listen to them on my daily commutes which expands my "reading" time immensely.

When I started my biography kick last fall, one of the first ones I read was by Keith Richards who I still mistakenly refer to as Keith Richard. I thought the book would fill some time since it was 16 discs. However, I soon discovered it did much more than fill a time gap.
Voice is obviously everything in audio. Richards pulls in the best. Johnny Depp voices the story with support from Keith and Joe Hurley. I could listen to these voices again and again and again.

I love the way Keith describes the creative process. While he applies it to songwriting, the process applies to everything in Life.  He recalls:

"The famous day when Andrew locked us in a kitchen in Wellesden and said, 'Come out with a song"--that did happen. Why Andrew put Mick and me together as songwriters and not Mick and Brian, or me and Brian, I don't know...And I said, 'If we want to get out of here, Mick, we better come up with something.'

We sat there  in the kitchen and I began to pick away at the chords...'It is the evening of the day.' I might have written that. 'I sit and watch the children play.' I certainly wouldn't have come up with that. We have two lines and an interesting chord sequence, and then something else took over somewhere in this process. I don't want to say mystical, but you can't put your finger on it. Once you've got that idea, the rest of it will come.  It's like you've planted a seed, then you water it a bit and suddenly it sticks up out of the ground and goes, hey, look at me." (Richards, pg. 142-3).

My favorite discovery in this book is how Keith lives now and how he loves his library.

"I lead a gentleman's life.  Listen to Mozart, read many, many books.  I'm a voracious readers. I'll read anything...The Nelson era and World War II are on the top of my list, but I do the ancient Romans, too, and a certain amount of the British colonial stuff, the Great Game and all that. I have a fine library furnished with these works, with dark wooden shelves reaching to the ceiling." (Richards, pg. 522-3).


I grew up listening to the Stones, hearing about them on the news, and thought I knew quite a bit about Keith Richards.  I didn't.  However, I learned much more as I listened to this book.  And, I liked what I heard.  I think you will, too.