I’ll bet nobody had to ask these guys to get the burner going. What a sight: two of my favorite menfolk slaving over a hot stove, just the way god would want it. Are they barefoot, by any chance?
Ladies, come on! Who WOULDN’T want a shirtless Keith Richards in their kitchen, up bright and early, frying eggs (and maybe serving breakfast in bed, hee, hee)? And everyone used to say that Keef was only alive between 4 pm and 4 am and spent the daylight hours getting blood transfusions! You see the sun shining through that window in the top photo? Ha! Another Keith myth busted. Thanks to some morning coke and coffee he’s no doubt feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, composing riffs in his head.
It turns out these kitchen photos were taken at Andy Warhol’s Montauk, NY, home, where the Stones were rehearsing for their 1975 world tour. (I think Andy liked his eggs silver.)
Keith is known to make some mighty mean ‘bangers and mash’ (we Yanks call it sausage and mashed potatoes). He kindly shared the recipe in his memoir “Life.” Click here to see it.
As for Jimi, I’d love to think he was whipping up some voodoo chili, adding a pinch of his special herb for just the right smokey flavor, but he’s probably only posing. Pose away! I’d rather watch him walk around Chez Blogger modeling that BEE-U-tiful teal suit than have him cook for me.
Jimi may have fancied himself the lord of that manor, but he was actually subletting the ground-floor apartment at 34 Montagu Square in Marylebone, London, from Ringo Starr for £30 a month. The guitarist lived there with his paramour Kathy Etchingham, his manager Chas Chandler, and Chas’s girlfriend Lotta Null.
It was there in late 1966 or early 1967 that Jimi wrote his classic tune “The Wind Cries Mary.” Interestingly, kitchen duty – or lack thereof – purportedly inspired the song’s creation. Kathy (middle name Mary) had stormed out of the house after Jimi berated her for not cooking. The argument got his creative juices flowing. He sat right down and wrote a real beauty. (And not one word of the song has anything to do with culinary matters.) Alas, the apartment hijinks came to an end some time in ’67, when Ringo evicted Jimi for throwing whitewash all over the walls during an acid trip.
Okay, my musician friends: I shan’t cook for as long as I can get away with it. Who’s going to write a song inspired by ME?
And the wind cries….gravy.
© Dana Spiardi, Nov 6, 2015
Images of Jimi by Petera Niemeier.
Images of Keith by Ken Regan.
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“Oh, that old junkie!” you say? “How can you idolize a heroin-loving, speedball shooting hedonist who’s snorted everything from the finest cocaine to his dead dad’s ashes?” Well, if that’s all you know about the man we fans call Keef, then you don’t know diddly about the guy who can out-diddle Bo and just about everyone else when it comes to jamming out distinctive guitar licks. This seemingly indestructible hellraiser lives, breathes, eats, and bathes in blues-infused rock. Music is in his blood, and baby, he lets it bleed. He’s produced some of the gutsiest guitar riffs ever to start us up. He even dreams riffs, awaking once from a hazy slumber – guitar dozing on the bed beside him – to discover he had recorded the acoustic embryo of “Satisfaction” in his sleep, on a Philips cassette recorder. (The tape also included 40 minutes of Keith snoring.)
Power chords aside, what I love best about Keef is his ever-cool, unpretentious attitude; his refusal to pretty himself up. He is the ultimate soul survivor, a self-described “unpure purist,” a torn and frayed rebel who once said, “If you’re going to kick authority in the teeth, you might as well use two feet.”
And then there’s his total lack of apology when it comes to indulging in his prurient pleasures. “I don’t have a drug problem,” he said. “I have a police problem.” Being a chemical connoisseur does not necessarily make one a criminal. Even the haughty British press came to Keith’s defense after he and his Glimmer Twin, Mick Jagger, were convicted of drug possession charges in 1967. Borrowing a famous line from Alexander Pope, editor William Rees-Mogg of The Times said, “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?” He argued, “If we are going to make any case a symbol of the conflict between the sound traditional values of Britain and the new hedonism, then we must be sure that the sound traditional values include those of tolerance and equity.”
And so, the new hedonist of his day – the guy the rock magazines voted “most likely to die” for years on end – is a now a senior statesman of sorts. He kicked the hard stuff years ago, with or without those rumored Swiss blood transfusions. “Music was a far bigger drug than smack,” he said. “I could kick smack; I couldn’t quit music.” And how grateful we are.
He even survived 12 years with the crazy Italian-born actress/model Anita Pallenberg, mother of his first two children. Mick may have been knighted, but Keith deserves a Purple Heart for putting up with the tantrums of that domineering diva and remaining friendly with her long after his marriage to the beautiful, levelheaded Patti Hansen (with whom he has two lovely daughters.)
Keith’s 2010 memoir, Life, is the best book I’ve ever read about the rock and roll experience, and I’ve read more than a few. If you think for one minute that years of substance abuse have diminished Keith’s mental capacity even slightly, read his book and you’ll discover a man you only thought you knew.
Here is a very honest and intelligent portrait of a former choir boy, a bullied only child, a tireless musical explorer, a devoted father, a loyal friend, a respecter of women, a keen observer, a recorder of thoughts, a reader of good literature, and a fine cook, to boot (he even gives us his recipe for Bangers and Mash). Oh, and he also takes some good – and delightfully cheap – shots at his old mate Mick, calling him “Brenda” and “Her Majesty” behind his back, and enlightening us with various anatomical details of the Monkey Man. It’s all wildly entertaining, laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly sensitive. He talks about his final, personal performance for his mother, who tells him, on her deathbed, that he’s “out of tune.” Rocks off to you, Keith, for winning the Norman Mailer Prize for Distinguished Biography for your magnum opus! It is well deserved.
Here’s wishing you a very happy 73rd birthday and another 9 lives. I’ll be your parachute woman any day.
Here’s “You Got the Silver,” written and sung by Keith. This is one of my very favorite Stones tracks.
© Dana Spiardi, originally published Dec 18, 2011
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