Stoned Again

The recovery rooms, rehab clinics and wet brain wards of the known world are dotted with little affirmations designed to help get the terminally bewildered through another 24 hours of life without the aid of happy pills, king hell crank or the old electric soup – I’m talking about 12 Step classics like “one day at a time”, “think, think, think” “let go, let God” and “whip some skull on me bitch”. (Sure about that last one? – Ed) (No, that was a joke - Sam).

Personally speaking, I have never gone in for that class of thing. Ask Sam Snort what the difference is between a drunkard and an alcoholic and he’ll grin widely, raise a foaming tankard and reply with a slur: “A drunkard doesn’t have to go to all those meetings, maaan.”
But even if he did, Sam would be a lot more attentive and impressed if the addiction industry paid heed to the wisdom of one who has actually swigged, spilled, snorted, swallowed and otherwise ingested more toxic substances than anyone else in the whole history of personal and professional excess – and who has not only lived to tell the tale but become a true legend of popular music in the process. I refer, of course, to the only man Sam Snort defers to as “the guvnor”, the human riff himself – Mr Keith Richards.
Gnat’s piss
What a man! In a recent issue of Q, Keef – who turns 60 in December, Jah help us all – was asked if he was ever completely straight nowadays. Like Ian Paisley being asked if he’d consider converting to Catholicism, his answer was unequivocal:
“Never! Not since I first tasted it. I mean, my father said to me, ‘Keith, there’s a difference between scratching your arse and tearing it to bits’. I’ve always borne that in mind. I do drink through the day but I don’t wake up in the morning and get stoned straight away. I like to work my way in but I can take it or leave it. I guess it’s because of heroin. If you’ve been through that one and got through it, the rest of it is really like gnat’s piss.”
Okay, it might lack the mystical symmetry of the Serenity Prayer but who will disagree that Keef speaks nothing but the truth when he riffs on that thing about scratching your arse but not ripping it to shreds. Here, surely, is a philosophy by which all of us can live longer, more productive and happier lives yet, crucially, without having to give up entirely on experimentation in advanced brain chemistry or, worse still, hand ourselves over to some cabal of new age freaks who think that getting up early in the morning is the very fucking pinnacle of human evolution. When ol’ Double You Bee wrote that good shit about how too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart, he clearly didn’t have this particular Stone in mind.
Of course, Keef and I go back a long way. Who do you think bought the Mars Bar? And who was the mutha standing in the shadows? And when Keef nearly went down for good after being busted by the mounties, who do you think came up with the wizard wheeze of the little blind girl and the gig for charity?
But, truth to tell, Keef, like Frank, has mostly done it his way, owing nothing to nobody except maybe Ry Cooder for the ‘Honky Tonk Women’ chords and about 10,00O dead blues men. The rest has very much been a work in progress guided entirely by his own outlaw philosophy and the magical effects of brown sugar, Jack Daniels, Jamaican weed and the occasional full body blood transfusion. No matter that his face now looks like it’s been redesigned by the Port Tunnel boring machine – the miracle is that Keef didn’t long ago become a lookalike for the death’s head he likes to brandish on his index finger.

Piss artist
And there’s the rub – for all those who like to think that they can emulate the great man and instead wind up either talking to traffic cones or sitting in smoke-filled rooms praising a Higher Power, the message is simple: there’s only one Keith Richards and you’re not him.
In fact, you’re not even Ronnie Wood who has recently cleaned up his own act. Keef has welcomed the development, recalling Ronnie the drinker as “a piss artist”.
Keith Richards concerned about your drinking? I think this is what they mean by a rock bottom.
Your ever lovin’ Samuel J. Snort esq.