THE FIRST TIME I INTERVIEWED KEITH RICHARDS, he delivered A long encomium to America—how the blues and rock & roll records he'd heard as a teenager made him long to come here, how this country is like a whole world in itself, how America's freedom from tradition made it so much more open to new ideas than Europe. He had only one reservation. "
The one thing that really disturbs me about America," he said, after taking a pull on the Rebel Yell and ginger ale concoction he was drinking, "is that people don't like to read."
He suffused that statement with a combination of pity and befuddlement, as if the very notion was incomprehensible to him. Reading was like a song, he explained, the highest praise he could possibly offer. They both give "your imagination room to move."
And what does he like to read? His library, tucked into a dark corner of his rural Connecticut home, is a testimony to eclecticism. At the moment, he said, he was reading James A. Michener's Alaska.
"I didn't know anything about the place, but at least now I know a little bit," he said. "The last author I read was Dostoevsky. I like Dashiell Hammett, who I think is a brilliant writer. And Raymond Chandler. I read, like, four books at once," he concluded, laughing.
"Where's my book? Oh, I can't find that one, so I pick another one up. I read everything. It's about the same as what do I listen to. I listen to Mozart, and I listen to AC/DC."
For more photos and information on Keith Richards' private collection of books, see the complete article, "Gimme Shelter," in the July/August 2001 issue of BOOK. Call 1-800-317-BOOK to subscribe or to order a back issue.
For more photos and information on Keith Richards' private collection of books, see the complete article, "Gimme Shelter," in the July/August 2001 issue of BOOK. Call 1-800-317-BOOK to subscribe or to order a back issue.
