| 29th February 2008 01:17 PM |
|
|
| Factory Girl |
Charm is not a zeo-sum game. One can be charming in the face of adversity. Keith is still charming as hell, when he wants to be. |
| 29th February 2008 02:05 PM |
|
|
| Sister Morphine |
Okay people. I don't see why everyone's making a big deal out of this.
First of all, Keith has always gives absolutely great statements and always says what he's thinking. It seems to me, at least.
True enough, he IS getting older, and he IS repeating himself at times, so what? Hey, everyone gets older. And anyway, I don't think it's bad repeating your own statements given in earlier days already then 'cause it's better than being one of those guys who change their mind how it suits them and always give comments they think they're getting away with best at that time, but in the next moment in the next interview they'd say something completely different. Know what I mean?
So, when we read or watch interviews of Keith nowadays that contain lines he has alerady said before, that's fine with me, because I think it's an evidence that he at least remained loyal to himself.
And this interview we have here is completely put of context, anyway. We should read the entire one prior to start arguing about it, don't you think? (Btw, is it out there anyway?)
I for one don't see where Keith would be slashing on Mick.
Hey, when rading "Mick's vain" and all that, you have to consider: These guys have been together for a lifetime, and they probably even know the other one better than they do know themselves.
So, they've been together for ages, and we all know what Keith damn thinks of Mick! We know he thinks he's a great performer and we know how Keith salutes Mick's ability to fascinate an audience, may it be in small clubs crammed with 200 people or a huge stadium full of thousands of fans! We damn know it!
So, after all these years, I don't think there's any need no more for Keith to point that out in every single interview he's giving!! Or is there?
He knows it, we know it, Mick knows it, everybody knows it, so why the hell would he repeat THAT when there's so much else to repeat! *lol*
No, I'm serious.
So, I don't see Keith slahing on Mick and in any way trying to deliberately offend him or anything.
Apart from that, when you gone through so much with one and the same person and when you have lead such an adventurous life with a guys who respects you and who you respect, it's only natural you tease this person. In return, you'll also get teased. That's only human and of course, Mick and Keith, human as they are, have done it ever since.
Having said that I only want to add that I think it's all big buzz about nothin' AND: Another evidence we are in desperate need of a STONES TOUR!!!
But I must come back for a little more,
Charli
|
| 29th February 2008 04:07 PM |
|
|
| texile |
i don't think its so much a mick vs keith argument as it is just another example of, yes - keith being keith -
some of us just recognize keith's faults and refrain from being apologists...
|
| 29th February 2008 08:50 PM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
Keith needs Mick to stay cool
By Craig Brown
Last Updated: 12:01am
01/03/2008
Telegraph.co.uk
Are you a Mick or a Keith? In my experience, middle-aged men who like to think they are cool prefer to see themselves as Keith Richards, not Mick Jagger.
Even if, in real life, these men are high-powered bankers or fast-talking media moguls, in their fantasy lives they like to think of themselves as cool and sluggish rather than uptight and eager. I suspect it all goes back to their school days, when nothing could be worse than to be considered "keen".
Now aged 64, Keith Richards still likes to sneer at Mick Jagger for excessive keenness. "Mick's a maniac," he told the magazine Uncut this week. "He can't get up in the morning without knowing immediately who he's going to call. Meanwhile, I just go, 'Thank God I'm awake,' and wait for three or four hours before I do anything. He is a power freak and there's nothing we can do about it. Let him bugger about. It doesn't make any difference to what we do."
This is the sort of thing that Keith has been saying about Mick for most of their lives, often recycling the same old words. He is nothing if not repetitive. "Me, I wake up, praise the Lord, then make sure all the phones are turned off," Keith said in an interview three years ago, adding: "Mick has to get up in the morning with a plan."
Sometimes, it seems that Keith can only define himself as a sort of reverse version of Mick: Mick is insufferably busy, vain, restless, bourgeois, aspirational, so Keith - good old Keith - is laid back, unambitious, naughty, grounded, cool. Forty years ago, Mick and Keith filled in Proust questionnaires for a magazine called Rave, now sadly defunct. I have a copy in front of me. Their answers look like blueprints for the future. To the question, "Who are your favourite heroes in real life?" Mick answered "Dukes", while Keith answered, "The Great Train Robbers".
Unfortunately, even the coolest dudes have mothers, and mothers are notorious for remembering just that little bit too much. "Keith was very chubby," his mother, Doris once chuckled to a reporter. "He was squat, had fat little legs and always seemed to have a cold."
But by the time Keith was 18, he was already achieving a certain measure of cool, albeit within strict financial parameters. For instance, he spent the long, cold winter of 1962-63 lying in bed, gobbing at a makeshift target on the wall.
Mick would not have approved: he always took a pride in his appearance, and liked things neat and tidy. Meanwhile, Keith preferred to throw dirty saucepans out of the window rather than wash them. As early as 1961, he had acquired the nickname Mr Unhealthy. He has always liked fast cars, but has never had the organisational skills necessary for a smooth drive. When he owned a vintage Mercedes, he was so put out by the presence of gears that he used to start it, judderingly, in third gear, and keep it there throughout each trip.
I suppose this all adds up to some sort of study in cool, but where on earth would Keith be without Mick? It is hard to imagine that he would have been able to afford a vintage Mercedes, with or without gears. Without the over-energetic Mick leaping out of bed every morning armed with a new plan, I fear Keith would still be lying in that bed, still gobbing at the wall.
Over the age of 30, there is a thin line dividing Cool from Sad, and that line is provided by wealth. Keith Richards remains the King of Cool largely because he is a multi-millionaire. If he had, by chance, ended up as the lead guitarist with, say, The Swinging Blue Jeans, and he was at present on a Sixties Revival Tour, I doubt we would now be so full of admiration for his funny little laid-back ways.
The continuing success of The Rolling Stones can be put down to Mick Jagger's eagerness to make phone calls, to his shrewd and hopelessly uncool business sense. By my calculation, the last time the Rolling Stones had a top ten hit was with Start Me Up, which reached Number 7 in the charts in August 1981.
In that same year, he managed to persuade the group to accept corporate sponsorship for their world tour, from the cosmetics group Jovan. At the time, this seemed outlandishly un-rock'n'roll, but it is now par for the course: these days, most major rock groups seem to be far more into developing their property portfolios than they are into sex, or drugs, or even rock 'n' roll.
Jagger's astute business sense ensured that, in some paradoxical way, the fewer hits they had, the more the money came in. The Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge tour of 1994-5 earned them $320 million, and remains the largest-grossing rock concert tour. Their Forty Licks tour in 2002-3 earned them $300 million, and is the second-largest grossing tour ever.
Walter Yetnikoff, the former chairman of CBS Records, once observed quite how impressive Jagger could be as a negotiator. "In his head, he figured out what the French royalty would be on a record, doing the conversion and taking off the tax," he said, confessing, "I can't do that without my royalty guide."
According to one of his biographers, after one American tour, Jagger flew straight from New York to Switzerland with $1.2 million to deposit straight into a numbered account.
The Rolling Stones' last world tour was sponsored by the mortgage company Ameriquest. "The Rolling Stones offer a great platform to communicate our brand as proud sponsors of the American dream," explained a delighted spokesman.
Meanwhile, all Keith Richards has to do is pick up his guitar every four or five years, play cool, and poke fun, in his rambling, repetitive way, at the man who has made it all possible.
Asked last week about Jagger's powerful on-stage presence, he scoffed: "Excuse me while I laugh. He's a bit vain, let's put it like that. Meanwhile, the band can go to work. Vanity will not carry a band. But a band can carry vanity."
There is something increasingly reminiscent of Steptoe and Son about Richards and Jagger, with Keith resembling the raddled old Albert Steptoe, forever grumbling about young Harold's frantic desire to improve himself.
But it is Young Mick who keeps the show on the road; without him, Keith would have lost all claims to coolness. Instead, he would be just another wheezy old man, experiencing trouble with his gears.
|
| 29th February 2008 09:34 PM |
|
|
| Soldatti |
Excellent article, the truth in all the aspects. |
| 29th February 2008 11:21 PM |
|
|
| Ten Thousand Motels |
>Meanwhile, all Keith Richards has to do is pick up his guitar every four or five years, play cool, and poke fun, in his rambling, repetitive way, at the man who has made it all possible.<
|
|
|
| Egbert |
quote:
The jinn, my friend. wrote:
Public bashing of asshole is just the way it has to be.
You can say to asshole do not spill peanut butter on the carpet. The next time he is on carpet with peanut butter he still has no regard for the peanut butter spilling. Asshole will even implicate others into his peanut butter escapades. When quite actually asshole is the only one cheap shotting the peanut butter. Furthermore, asshole wants the implicated to pay for asshole's own peanut butter escapades. Who the fuck would make the innocent clean up after asshole, especially when the whole house could be razed after being filthied by asshole?
Um, this isn't the Iggy Pop board... |
|
|
| Egbert |
quote:
TampabayStone wrote:
TAlk is Cheap--best Stones album since Tattoo You and there after!!!!
Word! |
|
|
| Sister Morphine |
Great article, Ten Thousand Motels, thanks for posting.
I agree to everything that's said in it.
And also, it's the same the other way round. Without Keith, Mick would never have gotten so far, either. |
|
|
| The jinn, my friend. |
quote:
Egbert wrote:
Um, this isn't the Iggy Pop board...
Um, If you have to ask........
|
|
|
| Mel Belli |
The facts, ma'am, the facts:
"Start Me Up" reached No. 2 on the U.S. charts, I believe. And it was not their last Top 10 hit. (That would be "Mixed Emotions" -- No. 5?) And the Voodoo Lounge tour is no longer the highest-grossing tour of all time; that honor now belongs to A Bigger Bang.
Get it straight. And then whinge. |
|
|
| Gazza |
quote:
Mel Belli wrote:
The facts, ma'am, the facts:
"Start Me Up" reached No. 2 on the U.S. charts, I believe. And it was not their last Top 10 hit. (That would be "Mixed Emotions" -- No. 5?).
Its a UK newspaper, so in terms of British chart success he's technically correct. |
|
|
| glencar |
And SMU did make #1 on one of the US charts but not Billboard. |
|
|
| Mel Belli |
quote:
Gazza wrote:
Its a UK newspaper, so in terms of British chart success he's technically correct.
Hairsplitting!  |
|
|
| Soldatti |
quote:
glencar wrote:
And SMU did make #1 on one of the US charts but not Billboard.
#1 on Record World for a week, #2 on Billboard (3 weeks) and Cashbox (1 week)
Steel Wheels reached #1 on Cashbox for a week, #3 on Billboard and Record World was out of print by then. |
|
|
| texile |
great article.....and so true to the point.
i don't even think keith realizes what jagger does for him......like a child living in his own world.
|
|
|
| Bitch |
quote:
Mel Belli wrote:
In the interview, he also belittled Led Zeppelin's December one-off reunion gig, telling Uncut: "They had one? Well, well done Jimmy (Page) and Robert (Plant). F**k off. Stairway To Heaven don't make it for me, baby."
well Stairway To Heaven made it for ME baby! I lost my virginity to that lovely song ~ fvcked my way up the stairway to heaven ~ and it was heavenly!  |
|
|
| monkeyman2 |
[quote]polytoxic wrote:
He's still as close as I'll ever have to a Rock Idol, and in the end, he will go down as the greatest pure "rock'n' roll" guitarist, but listening to him now is an embarrassment. He's a cartoon. Mick's dedication to performance and Charlie's solid, stoic playing are the real "cred" in the Stones these days. Keith should own up to that if he wants to keep it real
Monkeyman2 comment:
Well done polytoxic.
Keith talks with more sense drunk, or at least he isn't bitching about his bandmate.
He's an angry alcholic who's liver is pissed off, he's not drinking or so they say.
Hell without Mick, Keith would be working bars and sideshows along the twilight zone.
Keith is my rock'n roll guitar hero, the greatest ever when he could play. Yes it is embarrassing to here him now, but occasionally there is a little magic. For me sometimes that is enough, Thank God for Charlie, Mick and the new sober Ronnie who has been playing better than ever.
[Edited by monkeyman2] |
|
|
| SweetVirginia |
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
Over the age of 30, there is a thin line dividing Cool from Sad, and that line is provided by wealth. Keith Richards remains the King of Cool largely because he is a multi-millionaire. If he had, by chance, ended up as the lead guitarist with, say, The Swinging Blue Jeans, and he was at present on a Sixties Revival Tour, I doubt we would now be so full of admiration for his funny little laid-back ways.
Well, I guess that's it in a nutshell. |
|
|
| Gazza |
here's the front cover of the issue of UNCUT which includes the interviews and CD.
 |
|
|
| glencar |
SWEET! Cannot wait! |
|
