Any "tell all" book about the Rolling Stones is expected to have plenty of stories of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll — and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards’ memoir "Life" delivers, if published excerpts are any indication. He reveals the Rolling Stones’ sex priorities in the early days of the band; goes into detail about how he hooked up with Anita Pallenberg (the mother of Richards’ two oldest children); and gives his perspective of how love triangles affected the Rolling Stones.
"Life" goes on sale on October 26, 2010, but Rolling Stone magazine and The Times have published advance excerpts of the book.
When the Rolling Stones formed in 1962, Richards says, "We didn’t have any other interests in the world except how to keep the electricity going and how to nick a few things out of the supermarket for food. Women were third on the list. Electricity, food and then, hey, you got lucky. We needed to work together, we needed to rehearse, we needed to listen to music. It was a mania. Benedictines had nothing on us. Anybody that strayed from the nest to get laid, or tried to get laid, was a traitor … It was that kind of atmosphere, that kind of attitude we lived with. The women around were really quite peripheral."
Richards also claims, "I’ve never had to put the make on a girl in my life. I just don’t know how to do it. My instincts are always to leave it to the woman."
Later, as the Rolling Stones hit it big, their love lives and significant others were in the public spotlight. By 1966, lead singer Mick Jagger was dating singer/actress Marianne Faithfull. Model/actress Pallenberg was originally the girlfriend of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, but she left him for Richards in 1967. (Richards and Pallenberg's relationship lasted for about 12 years.)
Richards describes the painful love triangle in his memoir, saying that "Brian's relationship with Anita had reached a jealous stalemate when she refused to give up whatever acting work she was doing to fulfill domestic duties as his full-time geisha, flatterer, punchbag — whatever he imagined, including partaker in orgies, which Anita always resolutely refused to do."
In the book, Richards goes into detail about the first sexual encounter that he and Pallenberg had. While on a road trip in Spain, Richards says that Pallenberg made the first move. "In the back of the Bentley, somewhere between Barcelona and Valencia, Anita and I looked at each other, and the tension was so high in the back seat, the next thing I know, she’s giving me a blow job."
Pallenberg and Richards fully consummated their relationship at a hotel in Valencia, where they checked in under the names Count and Countess Zigenpuss. It wasn’t long after that, Richards says, that he and Pallenberg had fallen in love. Despite the hot and heavy affair with Richards, Pallenberg was at first reluctant to break up with Jones. But Richards says that any guilt that he may have felt quickly disappeared when he reached his breaking point at witnessing Jones inflict so much physical abuse on Pallenberg that it left her with broken bones.
Richards says he told Pallenberg, "I can’t take this sh*t anymore. I can’t listen to you getting beaten up and fighting and all this crap. This is pointless. Let’s get the hell out of here."
Although Jones took the breakup hard and unsuccessfully tried to win Pallenberg back, Richards says he has no regrets about Pallenberg leaving Jones for him, and that it was better for everyone in the long run: "It’s said that I stole her. But my take on it is that I rescued her. Actually, in a way I rescued him. Both of them. They were both on a very destructive course."
The Richards/Pallenberg/Jones love triangle wasn't the only one the Rolling Stones had. In his memoir, Richards confirms a long-reported story that Jagger and Pallenberg had an affair while the two were filming the 1970 movie "Performance." Richards largely blames "Performance" co-director Donald Cammell for the affair: "Clearly he took a delight in the idea that he was screwing things up between us. It was a set-up, Mick and Anita playing a couple. Donald Cammell was more interested in manipulation than actually directing.
"I really didn't like Donald Cammell, the director, a twister and a manipulator whose only real love in life was f*cking other people up. He was the most destructive turd I have ever met. Also a Svengali, utterly predatory, a very successful manipulator of women. Cammell wanted to f*ck me up, because he had been with Anita before me ... I didn't find out for ages about Mick and Anita but I smelled it. I never expected anything from Anita. I mean, hey, I'd stolen her from Brian [Jones]."
Richards suspected that Jagger and Pallenberg had hooked up, and to get revenge on Jagger for sleeping with Pallenberg, Richards had a one-time fling with Faithfull, who was Jagger's live-in lover at the time.
Richards and Faithfull’s tryst was interrupted when Jagger returned home earlier than they had expected. Richards then snuck out a window, leaving his socks behind. Richards says in the memoir: "Marianne and I still have this joke. She sends me messages, ‘I still can’t find your socks.’" Richards adds in a dig at Jagger: "I was knocking Marianne, man. While you’re missing it, I’m kissing it."
But even with his "bad boy" reputation, Richards says he drew the line in some places. In his memoir, Richards reveals that he was at times "disgusted and revolted" by longtime Stones hanger-on Freddie Sessler, an eccentric entrepreneur whom Richards considered to be like a "second dad" to him, even though Richards says Sessler went too far in some groupie situations. Richards remembers an incident when Sessler brought three "what looked like underage" girls back to Richards’ hotel room. Richards’ response? "Freddie, get them out. We’re not going there, baby."
And when he got tired of being surrounded by hangers-on, Richards says he didn’t hesitate to shoot a gun to get people to leave. In his book, Richards states, "One time in Chicago, there was a big party in my room and loads of bimbos, Freddie’s groupies. They’d been there for 12 hours and I was getting sick of it, and I kept telling them to go but they wouldn’t. I wanted to clear the room and no one would listen to me. Get the f*ck out. For five minutes I tried.
"So boom. I fired a shot through the floor. Ronnie [Wood] and Krissie, his first wife, were also there, so I knew that there was nobody down in their room, which was directly below mine. And that cleared the room in a cloud of dust and skirts and bras. What amazed me was after that, I was stuffing the shooter, waiting for security to come or the cops, and nothing f*cking happened!"
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