Life

Keith Richards' memoir Life lives up to its name. It's a fiercely honest book that starts with his youth in Dartford, England, where he grew up younger and smaller than his school mates due to his late December birthday. It then sweeps more than 60 years from the early days of The Rolling Stones, through all of the albums, tours, loves, lives, and of course, the drugs and booze.

Richards is a musician who loves other musicians and what happens when they come together in places like Nellcote, France, where the Stones made what most consider their best album, Exile on Main Street, and in studios in New Orleans, New York, LA, Muscle Shoals, Montserrat, Jamaica and even the "Room Called L" in his home in Weston, Connecticut, next door to my Westport roots.

Richards writes honestly about drugs with few regrets, explaining that it was equal parts fun, addiction, and living up to the mythology that the media churned out as mates like Graham Parsons and countless others OD'd in their 20s:

"I can't untie the threads of how much I played up the part that was written for me. People think I'm still a goddamn junkie. It's thirty years since I gave up the dope! Image is like a long shadow. People love that image. They imagined me, they made me, the folks out there created this folk hero. Bless their hearts."

There are many rants about Mick Jagger, his moods, and need to control all around him. Richards calls him Brenda and makes fun of his "lead vocalist syndrome," "tiny todger," and knighthood, but says he loves and hates him like a brother. The Stones' nearly 50-year run more than speaks for itself.