{"id":1424,"date":"2011-01-24T21:54:24","date_gmt":"2011-01-24T20:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1424"},"modified":"2011-06-10T19:54:19","modified_gmt":"2011-06-10T18:54:19","slug":"another-dissolute-memoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1424","title":{"rendered":"Another dissolute memoir"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Another dissolute memoir which turns out to be a travel book in disguise<\/strong>.\u00a0 It seems only a few weeks ago that I posted on Howard Marks\u2019s High Times<\/em><\/a>\u00a0(no I wasn’t referring to mine…).\u00a0 But I have a particular interest in ‘Life’<\/strong>,<\/em> this autobiography by Keef (I had never realised this was a self-appointed nickname):\u00a0 before publication his managers had been talking to me about possibly directing the forthcoming documentary that will complement the book.\u00a0 Talks went on for a while but were then blown out of the window when Johnny Depp said he wanted to do it as his first directing job – clearly rather a better name to have over the marquee and an old friend of Keef\u2019s anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Life<\/em> is fun – some good stories told with the trademark louche bonhomie, either travelling through the Badlands of the southern States or downtown Kingston.\u00a0 And one of the most memorable passages is when he takes us to Morocco, Tangier and Marrakesh for a key moment in his story, the love affair with Anita Pallenberg when she leaves Brian Jones for him, almost pulling the Stones apart in the process.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Someone has to make it into an opera – the beautiful but tempestuous boy (Brian), the beautiful and even more tempestuous Anita (“she certainly made a man out of me”) and Keith himself, the picaresque hero, with the story played out against a sixties Morocco that he describes well — the kef<\/em> and hash, the orange trees, the sheer alien nature of the place just a slip of a way from Europe (“it could have been 1000 years ago”).\u00a0<\/p>\n

As it still is.\u00a0 I have been over to Morocco three times in the last year and it never ceases to amaze me how such a wild country can be just a few hours on a no-frills flight away (Ryanair from London Stansted).\u00a0<\/p>\n

For my feelings on how you can “get lost in Fez”, see the recent feature <\/a>I did for the January issue of Conde Nast Traveller<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But one particular moment in Keef\u2019s travels particularly intrigued me – when he fetches up in, of all places, Urubamba, the small town in Peru where I lived with my family five years ago, as recounted in Cochineal Red<\/a><\/em>:\u00a0 he and Mick have to sing for their supper (and a room for the night) as no one knows who they are.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a story I\u2019d heard when staying in Urubamba but always discounted as one of those tall stories.\u00a0 Sure the Rolling Stones came here and played here in the small corner cafe on the square.\u00a0 Pass the Inca treasure will you…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another dissolute memoir which turns out to be a travel book in disguise.\u00a0 It seems only a few weeks ago that I posted on Howard Marks\u2019s High Times\u00a0(no I wasn’t referring to mine…).\u00a0 But I have a particular interest in ‘Life’, this autobiography by Keef (I had never realised this was a self-appointed nickname):\u00a0 before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,82,7,1],"tags":[81],"class_list":["post-1424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-music","category-peru","category-uncategorized","tag-keith-richards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1431,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions\/1431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}