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Is Keith Richards’ solo album ‘Main Offender’ the best Rolling Stones album of the 90s?
03.17.2022
09:46 pm
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Photo by Claude Gassian

For much of the 1980s, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were on the outs. The pair were feuding about the direction the Stones’ music would take. Jagger wanted to modernize the band’s sound, while Richards wanted to stick with the blues rock formula which had already worked—and worked very well for them indeed—for the past three decades. Subsequently, new music by the Rolling Stones was not forthcoming for several years, and the 1985 sessions for the desultory Dirty Work album were notably strained, with Jagger putting his vocals over the finished instrumental tracks apart from the rest of the group. It was rare that all five band members were ever in the studio at the same time.

Signed as a solo artist on the back of the Stones move to Columbia-CBS Records—something the rest of the group was initially unaware of—Jagger produced She’s the Boss in 1985 alongside a star-studded cast of musical luminaries that included Bill Lasswell, Sly & Robbie, Jeff Beck, Nile Rodgers, Herbie Hancock and Pete Townshend. Richards was pissed about what he saw as Jagger’s lack of commitment to their band. When Jagger refused a tour to promote Dirty Work, choosing to concentrate instead on his solo career, things between the Glimmer Twins deteriorated even further.

Restless at the lack of musical activity, Richards worked as a bandleader on director Taylor Hackford’s Chuck Berry documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll, assembling a supergroup for two concerts that included Eric Clapton, Etta James, Linda Ronstadt and Berry’s longtime songwriting partner pianist Johnnie Johnson. The drummer for the band was a young musician by the name of Steve Jordan who had played in the Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman house bands. Richards and Jordan got along great musically—Jordan had already performed on Dirty Work—and formed the X-Pensive Winos for the purpose of recording Richards’ first solo album, the well-received Talk is Cheap, and a support tour (documented on the Live at the Hollywood Palladium, 15 December 1988 album.)
 

Steve Jordan and Keith Richards in 1992, photo by Claude Gassian.
 
The X-Pensive Winos were put on hold when bridges were finally mended between Jagger and Richards prior to the Rolling Stones induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in early 1989. The tour in support of the Steel Wheels album was their biggest to date, seeing the Stones trekking all over the globe and raking in around $200 million. When the tour ended, Richards, feeling creatively energized, set about writing songs again with Steve Jordan that eventually became 1992’s Main Offender album.

For Main Offender the X-Pensive Winos added guitarist Waddy Wachtel to the group. Wachtel, a musical sideman of some renown who has worked with the likes of Stevie Nicks, Linda Ronstadt, James Taylor, Warren Zevon, Bryan Ferry, and Jackson Browne, was brought in to co-produce the album with Richards and Jordan, and he co-wrote four of the albums songs with them. Main Offender was critically acclaimed, and featured some fantastic performances, but just barely made the bottom rungs of the US album charts. The subsequent tour, however, was a big success, but the X-Pensive Winos were put on ice again when the Rolling Stones regrouped for the Voodoo Lounge album and the $320 million grossing world tour of the same name.  The Winos would eventually return in 2015 for the Crosseyed Heart album.

Today marks the release of the Super Deluxe 30th anniversary edition of Main Offender from BMG. The box set is presented in a unique art book format with the album pressed on “smoke” color vinyl. Main Offender has been newly remastered under the supervision of Steve Jordan. Also included is the Winos Live in London ’92 album (exclusive to this set) and an 88-page book with never-before-seen photos, and a packet of reproduction promo materials.

CLICK HERE TO WIN A FREE COPY OF THE MAIN OFFENDER SUPER DELUXE BOX SET FROM BMG.

The 1992 music video for the “Wicked As It Seems” single.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.17.2022
09:46 pm
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Famous boozers and their favorite liquid vices

Humphrey Bogart on the set of The African Queen with his buddy, Gordon
Humphrey Bogart on the set of 1951 film, The African Queen with his buddy, Gordon

As I’m sure many of you are right now preparing for tomorrow, a day when you will be attempting to brush away vodka-coated cobwebs from your eyes, I thought it would be fun to share some stories and images of some of the best-known boozers and professional drunks in history. One is amazingly still with us, and the others have sadly long since gone on to the great barroom in the sky. I’m going to start this post off with one of my favorite mythical drinkers, Academy Award-winning actor, Humphrey Bogart.

Here’s Bogie (pictured above) on the set of the 1951 film that won him that Academy Award, The African Queen. While Bogart played the part of a gin-guzzling riverboat captain, Charlie Allnut, in real life he didn’t show a particular affinity for any one kind of liquor, but seemed to love them all, especially Scotch. While most of the cast and crew of the The African Queen fell ill during the filming (which was shot on site in Uganda and the Congo in Africa), Bogart was claimed that he didn’t get sick, and whenever a fly bit him “it dropped dead” thanks to his steady diet of beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whisky. Bogart’s fascinating life and love affair with booze is beautifully detailed in the 2011 book, Tough Without a Gun: The Life and Extraordinary Afterlife of Humphrey Bogart (which I highly recommend you read if you are at all a fan of Bogart).
 
Hunter S. Thompson on the job
Hunter S. Thompson
 
Easily known as one of history’s most irresponsible consumers of booze and drugs is much loved and often hated gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson. As well known for his contributions to the literary world as he is for his rabid intake of alcohol, Hunter enjoyed his all of his vices in excess - whether it be booze, amyl nitrate, cigarettes, guns or women. If it was bad for you, Hunter always had a lot of it around. A drunk after my own heart, Thompson was known for ordering several drinks at a time so he didn’t have to wait for a refill.

If you’ve ever read any of Thompson’s work and are also acquainted with documents concerning his actual life , it quickly becomes clear that his “fictional” exploits were much more close to the actuality of his day-to-day life on the edge. What more could you expect from a man who lived for sleeping late, having fun, getting wild, drinking whisky, and driving fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested? That’s right. Nothing.
 
Keith Richards and his ever present bottle of brown liquor
Keith Richards and his ever present bottle of brown liquor
 
As I mentioned, many of the subjects in this post are unsurprisingly no longer among the living. There are a few notable, now (mostly) reformed booze-hounds still celebrating birthdays and among them is Keith Richards. Keef turned 72 on December 18th and like Ozzy, many refer to Keith as a “medical miracle” of sorts. After reading Richard’s 2010 memoir Life, I felt like I needed to check into rehab after digesting his tales regarding his daily, decades long diet of Jack Daniels and cocaine.

Like many vice-loving individuals, Keith periodically dried out here and there through the years. But 2006 wasn’t one of those times. While filming Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Keith was so loaded on set that it became director Gore Verbinski’s “job” to get Richards’ to “sit up properly.” To anyone who suspected Keith was playing “method” in that film, congratulations! Take two drinks.
 
Pablo Picasso in his studio and bottles of Green Fairy
Pablo Picasso in his studio with a few bottles of the “Green Fairy”
 
Painter Pablo Picasso’s weapon of choice was absinthe and he drank it in alarmingly large quantities. For a time absinthe was a drink only available to the wealthy. But once it was available for mass consumption, even poor starving artists such as Picasso could afford to ride the “green fairy.” Although absinthe became prohibited in many countries in the early 20th century, it remained legal in Picasso’s home base of operations, Spain. In 2010, Picasso’s painting “The Absinthe Drinker” (which if you look at it long enough might make you feel drunk) sold for over 50 million dollars. And as we were just speaking of medical miracles, the hard-drinking Picasso lived to the ripe-old age of 92. Ceremoniously, on his deathbed, Picasso’s parting words were, “Drink to me, drink to my health. You know I can’t drink anymore.”
 
Richard Burton and Elizzabeth Taylor boozing together
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor knocking a few drinks back
 
Probably one of the most famous drunks in Hollywood, it was rumored that actor Richard Burton could throw back four bottles of vodka a day. In 1972 while filming Under Milk Wood, Burton “cut back” to one bottle a day telling director Andrew Sinclair that he “wasn’t drinking” on his film, which to Burton translated to a deviation away from his normal “three or more” bottles a day.
 
Elizabeth Taylor having a drink on the set of the 1963 film, Cleopatra
Elizabeth Taylor having a drink on the set of the 1963 film, Cleopatra
 
Together with Burton’s on-again/off-again drinking partner, Elizabeth Taylor, the pair brought new meaning to the phrase “life imitating art” in the 1966 film, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Taylor wasn’t as much as a heavy drinker as Burton, and he tried to hide his penchant for drinking vodka for breakfast from her during their two marriages. Burton’s tragic relationship with alcohol is excruciatingly detailed in the 2012 book, The Richard Burton Diaries. If you’d like to get the bed spins without having to drink like Burton, you can just read some of the excerpts here.
 
Charles Bukowski in his happy place, in bed drinking with a pretty doll
Charles Bukowski in his happy place, in bed drinking with a pretty doll
 
As there is no shortage of our alcohol-fueled war stories out there that concern all too many of our heros, I’m going to cap off this post with a man who is as synonymous to drinking as anyone else in the history of booze—poet and raconteur, Charles Bukowski. There’s a bar in Prague named for Bukowski who entices its patrons with not only the best cocktails in Zizkov, but also having the “cleanest toilets.” There’s also the Bukowski Tavern in my old hometown of Boston whose website will tell you about “Today’s Fucking Specials” which include “White Trash Cheese Dip” and the “Bukowski Mad Dog,” which is just a hotdog made cooler by attaching Bukowski’s name to it. Neither of which, with all due respect, would have been frequented by Charles Bukowski.
 
Charles Bukowski drinking in a real bar
 
But as food is not a topic drunks much care for anyway, let’s talk about Buk’s liver-drowning drinking habits. When times were good financially, like any drinker, his apartment would be stocked with expensive wine and whiskey. When he was broke, he’d turn to cheap beer for comfort. Like most people, Bukowski started experimenting with booze when he was a teenager and it is strongly rumoured that while he was writing his first novel, 1971’s Post Office, that he would down two six-packs of beer and follow that up with a pint of Cutty Sark. Bukowski once wrote that all he really wanted to do was stay in bed and drink saying that “when you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.” And on that note, I bid you dear Dangerous Mind reader, a Happy New Year. Res ipsa loquitur - Let the good times roll.

h/t: Modern Drunkard

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Dennis Hopper, drunk and stoned with six sticks of dynamite—what could possibly go wrong?

Posted by Cherrybomb
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12.31.2015
04:19 pm
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The Stones & Alice Cooper add zest to vintage documentary on Canadian music scene from 1973

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During the opening sequence of this documentary on the Canadian music industry from 1973, The Rolling Stones rip through “Jumping Jack Flash” as the crowd at the Montreal Forum go wild. Mick Jagger struts across the stage, before dousing the audience with a bucket of water and handfuls of rose petals—why? I dunno, each to their own, I suppose…

Not to be outdone, Keith Richards plays his guitar as if each chord struck will bring pestilence, plague, death and disaster down on some faraway land. Richards plucks at his guitar with great gothic dramatic posturing—while in the background Mick Taylor plays the tune.

By 1973, the rock ‘n’ rollers of the early 1950s were middle-aged, mostly married with kids. The new generation of youth who filled their place were long-haired, turned on, tuned in, many believing that music could change the world. Where once rock had been about having a good time, now the feelings it engendered were the driving force for political change. Pop music made the kids feel good—and that feeling was how many thought the world should be.
 
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Well, it never happened, as music—no matter how radical—is in the end… entertainment. Those who took their political education from twelve-inch vinyl platters were quickly disappointed and soon awakened by pop’s utter failure to liberate the world, bring peace and harmony and all that. Nice though this idea certainly was, it was all just a pantomime—like Keef having fun hamming up his guitar playing.

Of course, the music industry is a far more sinister business than this—as this documentary Rock-a-Bye inadvertently points out. From the start, our choice of music was manipulated by long hairs with no taste in fashion as shown by their suits and ties and ill-fitting tank tops. These men picked the records that received the necessary air time to guarantee their success—thus making billions for the music industry. As Douglas Rain quotes one cynical record plugger in his commentary, who claimed if he played the British national anthem “God Save the Queen” on the radio often enough it would be a hit. The youth were only there to be manipulated and sold product—plus ça change….

This is a good illuminating documentary and apart from The Stones, there are performances from Ronnie Hawkins (plus interview), Muddy Waters and Alice Cooper. There’s also an interview with Zal Yanovsky of the Lovin’ Spoonful who lets rip a four-letter word (mostly bleeped out) tirade on the state of music in the 1970s. What Yanovsky forgets is that music is a business and only the amateurs and the rich will play for free.
 
Watch the entire documentary, after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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11.10.2015
09:50 am
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The Killer & Friends: Keith Richards, Gary Busey & Ruth Buzzi jamming with Jerry Lee Lewis

Gary Busey, Keith Richards, Ruth Buzzi and Jerry Lee Lewis
Top L to bottom R: Gary Busey, Keith Richards, Ruth Buzzi and Jerry Lee Lewis
 
Hosted by Dick Clark, Salute! was a short-lived syndicated TV variety show centered around Jerry Lee Lewis that ran for a year from 1983-1984. Each week the show featured different musical guests like Marvin Gaye, Johnny Cash, Ella Fitzgerald and Glen Campbell, all who performed with Lewis during the show. Since that sounded pretty great, I decided to see if I could dig up any video footage from Salute!.

Thankfully the all-giving Internet didn’t let me down and produced a video of Lewis performing “High School Confidential” (originally recorded by Lewis in 1958) with Keith Richards (!) and what appears to be a cocaine-powered Gary Busey. And Busey (former vocalist and drummer for his own band from the 70s called Carp), who always remembers to bring the crazy to the party, does not disappoint here.
 
Keith Richards, Mick Fleetwood and Jerry Lee Lewis on Salute! 1983
Keith Richards, Mick Fleetwood and Jerry Lee Lewis on Salute!,1983
 
There are also a few other clips from Salute! out there that pair the likes of Lewis with Mick Fleetwood and Keef (performing of cover of Chuck Berry’s “Little Queenie”) and the woman who gave us the gift of purse-wielding spinster Gladys Ormphby, the great Ruth Buzzi (who looks super-hot BTW) performing and amusing version of Lewis’ song, “Breathless.” All three videos are posted after the jump. A word of caution, watching the 1983 version of Gary Busey (or any version of Gary Busey for that matter) might give you a contact high.

READ ON
Posted by Cherrybomb
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09.28.2015
09:43 am
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Woman transforms her face into Frank Zappa, Iggy Pop, Keith Richards and more


Lucia Pittalis before transformation

As RuPaul once said, “You’re born naked and the rest is contour and shading.” And Italian portrait painter and artist Lucia Pittalis proves that point with these insane makeup transformations. Lucia uses her own face as a canvas and turns herself into these iconic characters that are simply fan-fucking-tastic. She nailed Keith Richards, IMO.

If you want to see more of her work, you can follow Lucia on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.


Frank Zappa
 


Iggy Pop
 

Bette Davis
 

Keith Richards
 
More after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Tara McGinley
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06.24.2015
12:49 pm
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‘Poem for Keef’: Patti Smith’s poem for Keith Richards, 1978
05.29.2015
12:40 pm
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There’s a delightful slapdash quality to the magazine Rock Scene from the 1970s. The magazine, which was edited by Richard Robinson, featured contributions from Alan Betrock, Lenny Kaye, Leee Black Childers, and Lisa Robinson. I can’t speak for the intentions that went into Rock Scene, but to me it reads like an attempt, largely successful, to offer the demographic that gravitated towards, say, the Stones and the Ramones a Tiger Beat all their own. A typical issue from May 1977 name-checked the following acts on the cover: Ted Nugent, Blue Oyster Cult, the Heartbreakers, Aerosmith, Television, the Sex Pistols, and Gene Simmons. That mix of mainstream hard rock and cutting-edge impulses from the world of punk was typical of the magazine—most importantly, the Bay City Rollers, Donny & Marie, and Leif Garrett, to cite a random issue of Tiger Beat from the exact same period, were nowhere to be found.

The cover of every issue trumpeted the number of pictures to be found within (“OVER 150 PHOTOS”), and If they were grainy b/w pictures that were laid out in half an hour max, all the better. Rock Scene, which came out every two months, spent as much time documenting the insider-ish parties backstage at Max’s Kansas City or CBGBs as the gigs themselves.
 

 
The February 1978 issue of Rock Scene contains a startling artifact that, well, scarcely exists in Internet terms. (At least, none of the many Google searches I’ve tried was able to find it.) The cover of that issue promised “PATTI SMITH: POEM FOR KEEF” and damned if there isn’t a poem by Patti Smith about Keith Richards tucked in there on page 13.

By the way, the legendary Stones guitarist and songwriter is mentioned in three places in this issue (at least as pertains to the poem)—cover, table of contents, and on the page with the poem—and every time the final “S” is left off of his last name, as in “Keith Richard.”

The poem is called “Wreath.” I’ve done a little checking in the various poetry collections under Smith’s name, and it apparently isn’t included in any of them. It’s not in WITT (1973; a longshot to be sure) or Early Work, 1970-1979 (published 1994). The best chance would likely have been Babel, published in 1978 and covering poems of the previous five years, but it isn’t in there either.
 

WREATH

on the hills of rif we come to greet you
through the halls of myth we choose to roam
crown of thorns
shroud of love
our gifts we offer
and the waters of life
of health
of stone
on the hills of rif we call, undefeated
crown of thorns
kreed of love
and language comb
on the hills of rif we rise
salute you
ja-kiss your face of light and bone

Click on the image for a larger version:
 

 
I found this issue of Rock Scene at the Rock Hall’s Library and Archives, which is located at the Tommy LiPuma Center for Creative Arts on Cuyahoga Community College’s Metropolitan Campus in Cleveland, Ohio. It is free and open to the public. Visit their website for more information.

Posted by Martin Schneider
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05.29.2015
12:40 pm
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Poppies, pot and flying saucers: A short intro to the fashion of Nudie Cohn, country music clothier
05.13.2015
11:31 am
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There is an impression of country music as wholesome, simple, and rooted in the conservative values of middle America and the South. One of the many counters to that argument is Nudie Cohn and his Hollywood-sewn “Nudie suits.” These fashion masterpieces are all excess, sometimes with sexy images of naked ladies, pot leaves, pills and poppies, worn by everyone from Hank Williams to Keith Richards to Ronald Reagan. On top of all of that seedy flash, the sequence and flourish is downright camp—he designed for Liberace, and check out the Nudie suit that Elton John wore in this ad for “Rocket Man.”
 

 
Nudie’s beginnings were far humbler than the “country luxury” aesthetic he came to create. Born in 1902 in Ukraine, Nuta Kotlyarenko was so poor that he often had mismatched shoes collected from cast-offs (an indignity he later paid homage to by intentionally wearing mismatched boots—though generally of his own high-end custom design). After immigrating to America and changing his name at age 11, Cohn followed in his boot-maker father’s footsteps and apprenticed as a tailor. In 1940, he and his wife moved to LA and started Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors in their garage, quickly becoming the preferred couturier of the country music scene.
 

Hank Williams
 
Nudie Cohn’s influence went way beyond country though. As he adapted with the 1960s counterculture, his work became even more subversive—the “pot, pills and poppies suit” he made for Gram Parsons (see below) is one example, but was not the only time Cohn used druggy imagery. What made his work impressive though—be it the (supposedly $10,000 suit that cost $50 to make) gold lamé suit he made for Elvis or his own insane custom 1964 Pontiac Bonneville—was not only the over-the-top styling, but the sheer attention to detail and quality craftsmanship of a custom Nudie suit festooned with rhinestones or embroidery. His work has been so influential, obvious imitations rarely measure up, and the glitz and eccentricity of the Nudie Suit was essentially retired after his death in 1984. Nudie suits are highly collectible. Notable collections of Nudie suits have been amassed by actor Vincent Gallo and the late Dennis Hopper.
 

 

Helen “Bobbie Nudie” Cohn in custom gown
 

Roswell-themed suit with UFOs made for Keith Richards
 
More Nudie after the jump…

READ ON
Posted by Amber Frost
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05.13.2015
11:31 am
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Mick Jagger and Keith RIchards turn up in pretentious Italian art film, 1972
07.16.2014
07:36 pm
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Mario Schifano, an Italian pop art painter and collagist who exhibited alongside Warhol and and Roy Lichtenstein, released this unusual art film Umano Non Umano (“Human Not Human”)  in 1972. The plotless Godardian inspired episodic documentary is quite boring (I don’t speak Italian, so it’s quite boring to me) but it is notable for the inclusion of two odd scenes, one with Mick Jagger and another with Keith Richards (Anita Pallenberg, once Schifano’s girlfriend, is also in the film, and there are appearances by Carmelo Bene and Italian existentialist novelist Alberto Moravia.)

At about 36 minutes in, Mick Jagger is seen prancing around like an idiot in a pink suit with a corsage doing a not terribly convincing—and spinning—lip-sync of “Street Fighting Man.” He looks like he has to take a wicked piss the whole time. At the one hour and one minute mark, Keith is seen arsing around making avant-garde electronic music. That part is actually pretty cool, but the rest of it’s pretty awful. Beware of boobies, as this is mildly NSFW.

Although Umano Non Umano came out in 1972, I’d imagine that Mick Jagger’s scene was probably shot sometime prior to when Marianne Faithfull left him for Schifano in 1969. Two pages are devoted to their affair in her 1994 autobiography, Faithfull. According to her Schifano was a massive coke freak.

Maybe that’s why he thought the incessant heartbeat noise going on throughout this film was a good idea?
 

 
Thank you, Chris Campion of Hollywood, CA!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.16.2014
07:36 pm
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Rock stars with their cats and dogs

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Cool pictures of musicians with their pet dogs and cats, which show how even the most self-obsessed, narcissistic Rock god has a smidgen of humanity to care about someone other than themselves. Though admittedly, Iggy Pop looks like he’s about to eat his pet dog.
 
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Patti Smith and stylist.
 
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This is not a doggy bag, Iggy.
 
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There’s a cat in there somewhere with Joey Ramone.
 
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Tupac Shakur and a future internet meme.
 
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Bjork and a kissing cousin.
 
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O Superdog: Laurie Anderson and friend.
 
More cats and dogs and musicians, after the jump…
 

READ ON
Posted by Paul Gallagher
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03.27.2014
04:30 pm
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Keith Richards’ isolated guitar solo from ‘Sympathy For The Devil’
09.06.2013
01:28 pm
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Keith Richards’ guitar solo isolated from one of the takes (possibly the one released) of “Sympathy For The Devil.”

No shredding here. There’s a kind of jazzy call and response feel to the whole thing. Richards is playing his custom Les Paul. Direct to board?
 

 
Thanks to Steve Almaas.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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09.06.2013
01:28 pm
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Don’t Mess With Keith Richards

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Don’t mess with Keith Richards: The Stones legendary guitarist doesn’t hesitate or flinch when dealing with a “rogue” fan during a concert. Mick Jagger meanwhile…
 

 
With thanks to Carl Hamm
 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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04.29.2013
05:30 pm
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Double Gonzo: Hunter S. Thompson interviews Keith Richards
01.15.2013
11:40 am
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Keith Richards and Hunter S. Thompson muse on The Beatles, the afterlife, getting a full blood transfusion and using the Hells Angels for concert security.

Wayne Ewing, who shot this video, writes of the behind the scenes goings on at the Hunter Thomson Films website:

The interview itself was, like most of Hunter’s interviews, quite disappointing. You can begin to see why it took me so many years to shoot and piece together enough material with Hunter to make intelligible films – Breakfast with Hunter & the work-in-progress Breakfast with Hunter: Vol. Two. Old television interviews with Hunter like these abound on the internet, except this one has Keith.

At 4am we stopped shooting, and I urged the crew from Denver to wrap as quickly as possible. Rather than splitting asap as you expect, Keith hung around while we wrapped, sitting on the couch in the kitchen, not wanting to leave the inner sanctum of Gonzo quite yet. Hunter clearly wanted to get the Denver crew out so he could have more private time with Keith, who by now had fallen asleep on the couch, looking exactly like the famous 1972 Annie Leibovitz shot of him splayed out in a chair. As the crew endlessly wrapped cables, an unconscious Keith began to slide off the couch onto the floor.

Good luck understanding much of what the good Doctor says. Keith speaks the Queen’s English compared to mush-mouthed Thompson.
 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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01.15.2013
11:40 am
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The Friedman brothers’ rarely seen ‘Keith Richards Goes To The Dentist’

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It’s a pleasure to present a rarely seen comic strip from the demented minds of Josh and Drew Friedman.

Keith Richards Goes To The Dentist is classic Friedman and would have easily found a home in the legendary Zap comix, alongside R. Crumb and S. Clay Wilson.
 
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I find the Friedman Brother’s idea of a tribute to The Rolling Stones truer to the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll than the piles of coffee table books and redundant BBC documentaries that flood the marketplace. This is a tribute more in keeping with the band’s earlier transgressions. But, I’ll let Josh tell you about it:

In recognition of the worldwide celebration of The Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary—an occasion almost too good to be true—I present this primitive comic strip, which ran in High Times, Feb. 1981. The World’s Greatest Band contains two geniuses, and such grand, fantastical characters, that we are blessed to still have them on earth. But, being Englishmen, there once was this problem with their teeth. I sometimes wondered why The Rolling Stones didn’t have a cartoon series on Saturday morning television, like The Beatles. Perhaps it could have gone down like this:

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The strip in all four of its glorious pages can be viewed at Josh Friedman’s website Black Cracker. It’s gutbustingly funny.
 
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Posted by Marc Campbell
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12.14.2012
02:28 am
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Absolutely groovy photo of Gram Parsons and Keith Richards
09.19.2012
06:34 pm
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Easy riders.

Gram Parsons and Keith Richards on a motorcycle. Never saw this photo before and I’m totally in awe of Keith’s sunglasses.

Thanks to Nick Kent.

Posted by Marc Campbell
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09.19.2012
06:34 pm
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Keith Richard’s first network TV interview
03.20.2012
02:28 am
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Keith Richards interviewed on Friday Night Videos (a spin-off of Midnight Special ) in 1984.

Listening to Keith in this interview you can sense the memoir he would write two and a half decades later. A great storyteller with great stories to tell.

Many thanks to Jim Laspesa for sharing his awesome archive of rarely seen, hard-to-find and just plain cool videos.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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03.20.2012
02:28 am
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