GIMME KEITH

BUFFALO, NY 1978

A KEITH MOMENT IN THE 70's

I was always a Rolling Stones girl. Whether I loved Paul, John, George or Ringo the most never even crossed my mind. Give me Mick and Keith and their outlaw ways, their drug-induced juju and fabulous rock star clothes. Oh, how I longed to be Anita Pallenberg, holed up with Keith at Redlands, shooting heroin in front of the fireplace, sprawled out on a thick fur pelt.  Keith was my fantasy dreamboat manifest. I know, most teenage girls went ga-ga over Mick’s smoldering, mocking sexuality, but for me it was all about Keith. Always and forever Keith.  What I really wanted was to be Keith, albeit subconsciously, so I hacked off my hair, dyed it black and spiked it up with Vaseline. Little did I know that no matter how many times I shampooed, that stuff was in for the long haul. My grease stained pillowcases had to be thrown away, much to my mother’s disgust. Eventually I found a hairdresser who willingly cut my hair a la Keith, and at the Pyramid Mall no less! Tatu claimed that he just cut hair on the side and really played drums for the Cars. Really? Okay, and I really was Keith Richards and just impersonated a small town rocker chic for the hell of it....Whatever. The fact that he was obviously deluded didn’t stop me from sitting perched on the edge of my swivel chair, hanging on to his every word about his rendezvous with the Cars. I was a sponge for anything remotely rock and roll, or celebrity, for that matter. I totally missed my calling as a rock journalist.  I’m a firm believer in the “It’s never too late” maxim, but, um, there’s not really any great rock ‘n roll bands out there right now for me to get excited about.  In fact, one could argue that there haven’t been any great rock ‘n roll bands since the Stones,  but if I get started on how this is a major factor in the sad state of our Union, I’ll digress from the subject at hand. So, there I was with my perfectly styled Keith ‘do (is that an oxymoron or what?), my purple linen ankle boots and strategically tattered zebra sweatshirt. It took a lot of effort to look so disheveled! And therein lies the rub: that I was simply a wannabe. Keith just was, he didn’t know he was the standard that all of us others measured ourselves against, did he? His seemingly nonchalant rock star perfection was what I came to chase after in a guy. Talk about setting high (no pun intended..) standards! 

My first love had to be a Keith babe-in-training. I wouldn’t have had it any other way. It didn’t take long to find my guy and he, too, went to Tatu for the hacked-up shag and had the good fortune to be naturally snaggletoothed. Although he was only 15 at the time, he had the perfect gravelly voice, the kind that is usually only perfected after years of smoking Camel non-filters and drinking Jack Daniels straight up. Be still my heart!  I cut him some slack for lacking a cockneyed accent (we were, after all, living in upstate New York...) but he made up for it by donning a shark’s tooth earring and wearing a huge, silver skull ring on his middle finger; plus he played guitar just like ringin’ a bell... Let’s not be nit-picky, arright?  We were in rock and roll heaven, blissed out on love and various and sundry chemicals. While my parents couldn’t have been as clueless as we assumed, they, for the most part, let us be. My Mom was content to listen to her Kate Smith and Mario Lanza on the Stereo Console upstairs while we sequestered ourselves in the basement learning Jumpin’ Jack flash straight from the record.  Out of sight; out of mind; that was our family  motto. Only the occasional stomping of my Mom’s feet on the kitchen floor, which was over my bedroom, alerted us to the fact that she did, in fact, still exist, and our damn music was too loud and we were going to lose our hearing one day! Wasn’t it enough that she was born hard-of-hearing?!  We didn’t know what it was like! Turn that music down!  You’ll be sorry someday!  I certainly have been sorry more than a time or two in my life, but I must proudly say that not once have I been sorry for blasting the Stones. Sorry Mom! See, there I go again...Not only did we inflict torture by blasting our Noise, we insisted that my Mom and sisters come and watch our Shows. K. was obviously Keith, (yeah, his first name started with a K too...)his Stratocaster slung low on his hips, cigarette dangling from his lower lip, hair standing up and waving like bristles on an old paint brush. I was some combination of Janis Joplin and Charo, my purple boa pinned to my hair, teetering in my brand new high heeled over-the-knee leather boots that I got on serious clearance. The reason for the major discount became obvious when I tried to walk in them and the left heel buckled under me, sending me sprawling. Damn that lame heel that made me walk like my left leg was a good 4 in. shorter than my right! Not to be deterred, I perfected a sort of walk in which I would swivel and bend a little and called it sexy. Couple that with my sequined halter top, tattered mini skirt, fishnets and huge round sunglasses and you get the picture. I even threw in a few “cuchi-cuchi’s” for good measure.  We were Sid and Nancy circa the ’70’s.

I must give my family props for sitting through our sloppy renditions of Stones classics, me mumbling the lyrics that eluded my THC saturated brain. I think Jumpin’ Jack Flash went something like this: “I fell down with a toothless, bearded Hag/I fell down and could not get up again/I fell down and skinned my knee so bad/I fell down and I really hit my head/But it’s all right now/Jumpin’ Jack Flash it’s a gas, gas, gas.” At least I got the last line right...

Needless to say, our Shows didn’t last the standard hour and a half and my Mom excused herself as quickly as possible to go tend to more important things, like wrapping hot dogs in bacon for dinner or watching General Hospital.  That was fine too, because that freed us up to go do a few more bong hits in my room. We were free and clear until Dad got home. While Dad was the originator of the “out of sight, out of mind motto,” he was a stickler for K. and I not being in my room with the door closed. He had ambushed us many a time, his face flashing anger as I answered the door, shocked to see him standing there, like an apparition through the smoky haze, while K. scrambled from under the covers in the background. Smoke your pot and drink your booze but don’t close that door, dammit! I didn’t grow up with the fear of God in me; the fear of Dad was plenty, thank you very much. My Dad was a Man of Few Words, Tall Dark and Handsome, Silent but Deadly, the elusive Love that I find myself chasing after to this day.  He was a man of Reason and Rationale and didn’t get my Artistic Tendencies, even a little bit.  I bewildered him as much as he did me and we spent our lives circling each other in the ring.  About once every 10 years or so, like clockwork, we would both rise from our respective corners and have a honest-to-goodness knock-down-drag-out of which we would never speak of until the next round.  Hey, that’s just how we rolled...   

K. and I continued to live out our rock ‘n roll fantasy until he decided that he was really more Iggy Pop than Keith Richards. Now, I could get down and dirty with the rest of them, as long as it was done in the comfort of the Ritz Carlton, if you know what I mean. No syringe littered Bowery basements for me! To me, Keith embodied the perfect combination of dirty-animal-meets-Ritz Carlton.  Iggy was a bit too, well, feral for me; too Bowery Basement.  I couldn’t connect to his leathery face and sinewy body, all beaten and bloodied onstage. The attraction just wasn’t there. So, K. adopted his Iggy stance and left me for Androgynous Sue, an elfin pockmarked Mick Ronson lookalike. Granted, I wasn’t crazy about the changes K. was suddenly embracing, but how he could leave me for someone so blatantly homely was more than my fragile ego could take. I had no choice but to “borrow” my mother’s fur coat, grab my purple boa and Jackie O’s and storm into his room and trash it in true rock star style. Over and over again. I threw many a drunken tantrum and caused nasty public scenes. It was no use though, he had long since boarded the Heroin Express, hobo-style. Honestly, my heart broke and then broke some more. He was a torch I would carry for years to come; they don’t sing about the first cut being the deepest for nothin’.

It’s now years (and years....) later and I still haven’t found my one, true Keith. Let me qualify that by saying the one, true Keith of my youth.  Today’s Keith baffles me what with the twigs and shit he has dangling from his long greying hair. WTF? C’mon dude, your Pirates of the Caribbean look should have been shelved as soon as you were done with your cameo....But, he’s still Keith, deep down I know he is, and my prior comments verge on being sacrilegious, I know. I repent for my mean-spirited thoughts and comments and ask for absolution...

OH HAPPY DAY!!

To say that I was excited that he was finally publishing his memoir would be a gross understatement; I pre-ordered a copy of Life as soon as humanely possible and counted the days till its release.  It’s a hefty book and I’m beyond thrilled that he, being a man of few words in the past, is finally letting it all spill. I am, quite frankly, amazed that he remembers anything, although I must admit skepticism over his claims that he remembers everything...Really?  Even I can’t remember nearly half of everything and, wild as I was, I certainly didn’t hold a candle to Keith.  Is there anyone still alive that did? As I tenderly cradle his book, the fantasy of finding my own, real-live Keith has been reignited. I know that he’s out there.  I can see his multi-colored scarves, his smoldering eyes, his sexy bed-head, his alligator-boot wearin’ swagger. I can hear his seasoned whiskey-voice whisper my name.  In fact, I can hear him playing the opening chords to our love song right now...