Keith Richards’s Hard-Partying Hardiness

How the Rolling Stones guitarist defied expectations simply by staying alive and making music. View in browser | Update your preferences Books Groovin’ High The life and lures of Keith Richards. By David Remnick The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was around the age of thirty when the magazine New Musical Express ranked him atop its annual list of “rock stars most likely to die” within a year. He would hold the position, uninterrupted, for a decade. And yet, half a century later, the musician remains alive, active, and gearing up for a tour, which will take him to sixteen cities next year and be sponsored by the A.A.R.P. On Monday, Keith Richards turns eighty. In 2010, on the occasion of Richards’s new memoir, The New Yorker’s David Remnick revisited the life and career of the seemingly indestructible musician. Richards was then but a wee lad of sixty-six, famous for having been one of the most avid drug users in the history of rock and roll. (He was less famous, Remnick notes, for having given up heroin thirty years earlier.) While the florid details of Richards’s story are impossible to resist—the creative tax-avoidance schemes, the elephant-related mishaps, the nine-day coke binge without sleep—the piece also considers its subject as an artist, situating Richards among “addict geniuses” such as Billie Holiday. Richards proves unfailingly quotable about his musical peers, unfiltered and merciless even about Mick Jagger. His surprising longevity has defied the actuaries, and his palpable energy might indicate why. “I’m glad to be here!” Richards proclaims at concerts, to seas of aging fans. “I’m glad to be anywhere!” Read the story Also from the Archive Annals of Style Performance From 2002: Mick Jagger on tour calls for a bit of color. By Ian Parker Page-Turner The Orchid Keef From 2010: Whether or not Keith Richards is responsible for the orchid’s (possible) death is of little importance. By Meredith Blake More from The New Yorker A Reporter at Large Sentenced to Life for an Accident Miles Away A draconian legal doctrine called felony murder has put thousands of Americans—disproportionately young and Black—in prison. By Sarah Stillman Cultural Comment Hunter Biden and the Things Left Unsaid The President’s son is a ubiquitous topic of conversation. But, in four Biden-family memoirs, silence is the undercurrent that tugs at a voluble, demonstrative clan. By Jessica Winter Today’s newsletter was written by Nathan Burstein. Thanks for reading. Let us know your thoughts about today’s edition. Plus, browse more newsletters and invite a friend to sign up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. You’re receiving this e-mail because you signed up for the New Yorker Classics newsletter. Manage your preferences | View our Privacy Policy | Unsubscribe The New Yorker may earn a portion of sales from the products and services that are purchased through links in our newsletters as part of our affiliate partnerships with retailers. Copyright © Condé Nast 2023. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.