Unless you’re a Rolling Stones fan and keen on an autobiography featuring drink, drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll you’re unlikely to enjoy this. It’s filled with endless ‘shock-horror’ moments. Here’s a sample,

1 Gangster Keith

2 Drug addict Keith

3 Drunkard Keith

4 Geeky Keith

5 ‘I hate Mick’ Keith

6 Family man Keith

7 Musician Keith

8 and so on

He’s multi-faceted – aren’t we all? – and his core is? Music. This is when being a fan of the Rolling Stones becomes important. References to CDs from the 1970s onwards litter the text. There’s a great deal about guitar playing and his fabulous riffs, which he copies and makes his own, from great musicians. Keith stands on the shoulders of the greats and became great in his turn.

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“An ‘open tuning’ simply means the guitar is pre-tuned to a ready-made major chord – but there are different kinds and configurations. I’d been working on open D and open E. I learned then that Don Everly, one of the finest rhythm players, used open tuning ….He just used the barre chord, the finger across the neck. Ry Cooder was the first cat I actually saw play the open G chord.”

So buried in the dross and drivel Richards comes across as a man dedicated to music. And it is very heartening. BUT it’s 600 pages long and there is a lot to wade through, which they think is necessary. They’re wrong. It’s gruesome.