Happy Birthday To The 'Pissed Off' Keith Richards!

As Keith Richards celebrates his 74th birthday, the legendary Rolling Stones guitarist gives every last one of us hope that we too can throw all caution to the wind, engage in unspeakable debauchery & self abuse, and still live a long and prosperous life.

Of course, we'd be wrong because, while we may be able to engage in many of the same activities, at the end of the day, we will never be Keith Richards any more than picking up a baseball bat and pointing to the outfield wall makes us Babe Ruth.

Ah, but it sure is fun to dream, though, isn't it?

(Despite the "preview of death", this link to the video of the
X-Pensive Winos live at Hollywood Palladium in '88 actually works)

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One of Keef's chief accomplishments is Talk Is Cheap, the 1988 solo album he released as a rock & roll "f-you" letter to wayward bandmate Mick Jagger, who was too busy launching his solo career to clock in for the Stones' Dirty Work sessions.

Richards took Jagger's preoccupation with chasing trends as one slight, but to go so blatantly A.W.O.L. from a band that had just signed a ginormous record deal with Sony Records was interpreted by Keef as a show of complete disrespect and, most important of all, a brotherly betrayal.

One might even wonder if Keef's many chemical detours and dalliances weren't his way of stifling the incredulous bewilderment at Jagger's continual attempts to steer the band into the mainstream at all costs. That stress, combined with the rigors of touring, has led many down a dark path, but, by the mid-80s. Richards had cleaned up and was once-again a hell-bent force of nature looking to jump-start the band he'd formed with Jagger back in '62.

Rather than crawl back into a bottle, Richards got some friends together and wound up making what many half-jokingly call the last great Stones record.

Talk Is Cheap saw Richards' relationship with a new accomplice Steve Jordan blossom in real-time. What made the album so radically different from recent Stones efforts was that it had all the earmarks of a bear-soaked party on the patio that someone had had the good sense to capture on tape.

Jordan, of course, was one of the early members of the "World's Most Dangerous Band", a.k.a., the house band on "Late Night With David Letterman" who had also subbed for Charlie Watts during the Dirty Work sessions.

It was during those sessions that Richards discovered Jordan's musical depth, not to mention his desire to be involved in the Chuck Berry live concert film "Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll". The pair came out of that experience connected at the hip, jumping right into sessions with longtime Jordan cohort Charlie Drayton that quickly led to the newly-christened X-Pensive Winos backing Richards on his first solo album.

As anyone who heard the record or saw the band perform could tell, Richards and his bandmates were having a whole lot of fun. Nobody noticed this more than Mick Jagger, who was suddenly eager to make himself available to work on what would become, in actuality, the last good-to-great Rolling Stones' album, Steel Wheels.