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Life

Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780753826614

Price: £12.99

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Once-in-a-generation memoir of a rock legend – the No. 1 SUNDAY TIMES bestseller.

‘Electrifying’ New York Times

‘A masterpiece’ The Word

‘Funny, poignant, brutally honest’ Sunday Telegraph


With the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics and the songs that roused the world, and over four decades he lived the original rock and roll life: taking the chances he wanted, speaking his mind, and making it all work in a way that no one before him had ever done.

Now, at last, the man himself tells us the story of life in the crossfire hurricane. And what a life. Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records as a child in post-war Kent. Learning guitar and forming a band with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. The Rolling Stones’ first fame and success as a bad-boy band. The notorious Redlands drug bust and subsequent series of confrontations with a nervous establishment that led to his enduring image as outlaw and folk hero.

Creating immortal riffs such as the ones in ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and ‘Street Fighting Man’ and ‘Honky Tonk Women’. Falling in love with Anita Pallenberg and the death of Brian Jones. Tax exile in France, wildfire tours of the US, ‘Exile on Main Street’ and ‘Some Girls’. Ever increasing fame, isolation and addiction. Falling in love with Patti Hansen. Estrangement from Mick Jagger and subsequent reconciliation. Solo albums and performances with his band the Xpensive Winos. Marriage, family and the road that goes on for ever.

In a voice that is uniquely and intimately his own, with the disarming honesty that has always been his trademark, Keith Richards brings us the essential life story of our times.

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Reviews

Once you begin this, wild, wild horses couldn't drag you away
INDEPENDENT
Once you begin this, wild, wild horses couldn't drag you away.
Boyd Tonkin, INDEPENDENT
This is a good, gossipy read. But the best stuff is Keith on music. Check out his wonderful passage on Charlie Watt's drumming
EVENING STANDARD
The fact that Keith is still alive to tell the story is incredible.
Chris Tarrant, THE SUNDAY EXPRESS S MAGAZINE
A hilarious, ribald and often shocking tale told elegantly and with much candidness
CATHOLIC HERALD
Funny, poignant, brutally honest, engagingly colloquial, Life is pure Keith Richards, as good a rock memoir as you are likely to read.
Sally Cousins, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
Dark, honest and gleefully indiscreet from the first page to the last, it puts some of today's painfully dull musicians to shame
SHORTLIST
I was hooked from the start
Giles Deacon, HARPER'S BAZAAR
Densely packed with incident ... immensely readable
SUNDAY TIMES
LIFE may be the best rock star autobiography ever
CLASSIC ROCK
Life may be the best rock star autobiography ever.
CLASSIC ROCK
Keith comes across as a thoroughly decent man, with just a hint of the devil. His relationship with Jagger is complex and fascinating
EVENING STANDARD
Dark, honest and gleefully indiscreet from the first page to the last, it puts some of today's painfully dull musicians to shame.
SHORTLIST
A masterpiece, the most sustained, colourful and rambunctious rampage through his [Keith's] 67 years imaginable
THE WORD MAGAZINE
A memoir so full of incident it feels like the author's lived three lives, not one.
SUNDAY TIMES
A hilarious, ribald and often shocking tale told elegantly and with much candidness.
CATHOLIC HERALD
This is a good, gossipy read. But the best stuff is Keith on music. Check out his wonderful passage on Charlie Watt's drumming.
William Leith, LONDON EVENING STANDARD
Electrifying... the intimate and moving story of one man's long strange trip over the decades, told in dead-on, visceral prose without any of the pretence, caution or self-consciousness that usually attend great artists sitting for their self-portraits
NEW YORK TIMES
The fact that Keith is still alive to tell the story is incredible
SUNDAY EXPRESS S MAGAZINE
densely packed with incident ... immensely readable
Lynn Barber, SUNDAY TIMES
a masterpiece, the most sustained, colourful and rambunctious rampage through his [Keith's] 67 years imaginable
Mark Ellen, THE WORD
LIFE is pretty faultless as the quintessential depiction of the man in full and his extraordinary life and times to date
THE TIMES
I was hooked from the start
HARPER'S BAZAAR
Funny, poignant, brutally honest, engagingly colloquial, Life is pure Keith Richards, as good a rock memoir as you are likely to read.
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
A memoir so full of incident it feels like the author's lived three lives, not one
SUNDAY TIMES