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This compilation of interviews encompasses the Rolling Stones’ fifty-year career. Featuring articles from such celebrated publications as Melody Maker, Rolling Stone, and GQ, as well as interviews that have never previously appeared in print, it charts Keith Richards’s journey from gauche young pretender to swaggering epitome of the zeitgeist to beloved elder statesman of rock.

In the Stones’ early years Keith stood in the shadows of Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. Soon, however, he became famous as half of the second-most important songwriting team in the world, and in 1967, his drug bust and subsequent imprisonment made him a household name. Richards was transformed into a symbol of rock rebellion, and played the part to the hilt, kicking an audience member in the face, punching a journalist in the jaw, and standing up to Hell’s Angels at Altamont. Now he was not just a Rolling Stone, but was on the cover of Rolling Stone.

His interviews, meanwhile, matched his outlaw image: free of banality and euphemism, they reveled in frank stories of drugs and debauchery. Yet they also revealed an unexpectedly warm, unpretentious, articulate, and honest man. The pages of this book amply illustrate that when Keith sits down in front of a microphone, a certain kind of magic occurs.