Keith Richards can BLOW ME!!!

By John Saleeby
July 1, 2007

"This isn't Rock And Roll, this is GENOCIDE!!"
- David Bowie, "Diamond Dogs"

"I don't exactly remember, but I bet I made that up."
- Iggy Pop

Whenever I get depressed about my Life I often blame it all on Keith Richards. But it wasn't getting high and listening to Rock And Roll when I was a teenager that ruined my Life, it was reading Rock magazines like Rolling Stone, Creem, Suck Stranger's Dicks For Cash, and Circus while getting high and listening to Rock And Roll that ruined my Life. How did those magazines ruin my Life? Simple - By anointing Keith Richards as the Ultimate Masculine Role Model for my generation. An earlier generation had John Wayne as its Masculine Role Model and went on to save the World, mine had Keith Richards and has gone on to figure out that it's better to vomit in the toilet than on the floor. Yeah, sure, Keith Richards was The Coolest Guy In The World. What other conclusions were we reaching at that time? "My Parents are ASSHOLES!", "Smokin' weed is the BEST!", and "I'm going to become a COMEDY WRITER AND A STAND UP COMIC!!!" At least any kid growing up with a head full of crap like that almost a decade later had Kurt Cobain for a role model and killed himself before he could find out about becoming a Comedy Writer and a Stand Up Comic.

My God, if I had fallen under the diabolical spell of Keith Richards enough to become a Guitar Player I'd really be screwed! Just look at Eddie Van Halen. No, don't look at him - You'll get sick. Just think about Eddie Van Halen. Because of Keith Richards that dumb bastard Van Halen thought he was going to get wasted for thirty straight years and when he was a little old man people would think he was cool just because he's a guitar player. Well, he's been wasted for thirty years and now that he's a little old man everybody who looks at him throws up all over the place, guitar player or not. And who gives a crap about guitar playing, anyway? What is this, the late Sixties? Kids today don't know how to play Air Guitar anymore than they know how to play Flamenco Guitar. Anybody who's playing guitar in 2007 is a chump, a douchebag, a weasel, a nimrod, a shitbreath, a . . . Is Forbis insulted yet? Okay, I'll stop.

Keith Richards, of course, is in The Rolling Stones, "The World's Greatest Rock And Roll Band". When I was a kid The Rolling Stones were a Big Deal because they were better than The Beatles. Well, so what? Now I can see that, in addition to The Stones, The Clash were better than The Beatles, Led Zeppelin was better than The Beatles, Bowie was better than The Beatles,  we could go on all night making a list of bands that were better than The Beatles. Get a job at The Onion AV Club and you can get paid for it. But now we could probably make an even longer list of bands that are better than The Stones. They haven't made a decent record in TWENTY YEARS! Neither have The Beatles but they've got a written excuse from George Harrison and John Lennon's Doctors. The Stones have put out so much lousy stuff that at this point a good case could be made for them as The World's Worst Rock And Roll Band. Until the next Springsteen CD, then it will be a tie. No, wait . . . Throw in the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards solo records and Springsteen will have to put out another collection of Pete Seger covers to beat 'em. The Rolling Sones suck! Who is The World's Greatest Rock And Roll Band Today? Why, The Arctic Monkeys, of course! But only for their name - Can you imagine how cool it would be if they had Monkeys up in the Arctic playing pranks on Polar Bears and sneaking up behind Penguins to scare 'em and make 'em jump up in the air? Is it the Arctic that has Penguins or is it the Antarctic? I can never keep that straight in my head. Where does Santa live? The North Pole? I think it would be cool if Santa had Monkeys instead of Elves. Fuck Elves, they ain't cool. Well, they're cooler than Keith Richards. You think Santa would put up with a creep like Keith Richards? Hell, no. He'd snort Frosty The Snowman! Maybe Mick Jagger needs Keith Richards around but not Santa - "Keith Richards with your Skull Ring so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?" No way! Rock And Roll is OVER. Hell, Music is over. If you, me, and Forbis all went to the store and bought the same CD that alone will be enough to get the thing into The Top Ten. Within a couple years so few CDs will be purchased they'll just have The Top Nine. Jarvis Cocker will be King!

But the Big Issue here is Booze And Drugs. I'm not going to get up on my soap box and . . . What? I've been up on my soap box from the very beginning of the article? No, I haven't, this is an ice chest full of Budweisers. Leave me the hell alone. Now, I'm not about to get all preachy and tell you that you shouldn't drink booze and take drugs, but I will tell you that if you are going to drink booze and take drugs you can forget about millions of stupid kids wanting to be just like you when they grow up just because you play the god damn guitar. That shit is over. Like this Pete Doherty guy. Thirty years ago you would have had a poster of Pete Doherty on your bedroom wall and you'd jump around in front of it pretending a baseball bat was all electric guitar after you smoked a joint and put on one of his records. Why aren't kids doing that with Pete Doherty posters and records today? Because after FORTY YEARS of Keith Richards the very last thing America needs is another wasted  British guitar player. Pete Doherty may get to make records, play concerts, screw beautiful girls, and all that Rock Star jazz but he couldn't be any more of a joke if he was Ben Affleck. Pete Doherty is so fucked up they won't even let him come to America! Can you imagine being too fucked up to come to the most fucked place on Earth? What do you have to do to be too fucked up for America? Oh . . . He makes paintings with his own blood. I forgot about that. You think that's sick my Mom and Dad made ME out of their own blood. If Keith Richards had ever made paintings using his own blood people would have been rolling them up and smoking them. But if The Wasted British Guitar Player was The Ultimate Human Being thirty years ago today he is as tedious as The Late Night Talk Show Host, The Old White Man Politician, and The Genius Writer Forced To Writing Shit Like This On The Internet To At Least Pretend That He Has A Few Readers. Who needs it?

But why were Rock And Roll tastemakers and trendsetters of the Seventies so eager for teenagers like me to accept Keith Richards as Our Lord And Saviour? Looking back on it now it is perfectly obvious - They were trying to fucking kill us. By the late Seventies the Boomers were almost the Over Thirty Ones they had Never Trusted and were painfully aware of how much older they suddenly were than all the fine young "chicks" to which they had become accustomed. And it didn't help that there were all those younger "dudes" competing for the attention of those "chicks". After years of raging war on everyone older than them the Boomers were now obliged to open a "Second Front" in their lifelong quest for Everything Under The Sun - One against everyone younger than them. It is no coincidence that in the early Eighties when guys my age were at our most grotesque Keith Richards-ness the Boomers were in the midst of "The Fitness Craze" - After years of chemical indulgence those creeps were in the gym working out in a desperate frenzy to preserve their supposed Good Looks. Who knows how many Sweet Young Girls in their late teens and early twenties fell into the clutches of those "Buff" lechers after understandingly spurning advances from staggering, drooling doped up guys their own age? The Bastards! Didn't have the BALLS to face us on The Field Of Battle any more than they could take on the Viet Cong. But The Day Will Come, You Motherfuckers. Mark My Words, The Day Will Come.

We'll never know exactly how many of us died in action under the onslaught of Operation Keith. I'm still alive but I didn't escape unscathed - I have no feeling in the toe next to my big toe on my left foot (The toe next to the big toe is essential for detecting when it is time to trim the nail on the big toe. I can't tell you how many socks I've ruined!), I had a picture of Adolf Hitler sodomizing The Queen Of England tattooed onto my face (That's the only reason Matthew Perry got to play Chandler on "Friends" instead of me), and I'm partially color blind so when I look at Periwinkle I see Sierra. But a lot of guys weren't so lucky - Overdoses, car wrecks, suicides, marriages, babies - Where is our Palestine? When will we have our Nuremburg? We don't have little numbers tattooed onto our arms but have you seen the crap we've got scribbled all over our arms? Little numbers would be an improvement!

And Keith Richards? He's such a dork these days that he's reduced to a Super Celebrity Guest Appearance in Johnny Depp's latest Pirate movie. Who does he play in it? Oh, the Father of the crazy Pirate Depp plays? Well, that's lame. Why have some ugly guy in the movie as Depp's Dad when you could have some hot middle-aged broad like Sharon Stone or Sigourney Weaver as his Mom? What a bunch of homos! Or Lindsey Lohan - At the rate she's going she'll be able to play a middle-aged woman by the end of the year.

See, that's what booze and drugs will do for you, kids. People are making the kind of jokes we used to make about Keith Richards about Lindsey Lohan! Sheesh!

Oh, and sorry I don't have any "Snorting Dad's Ashes" or "Falling Out Of A Coconut Tree" jokes for you. I'm saving them up for when Lindsey does that shit.

John Saleeby wrote for The National Lampoon while he was in high school, was a stand up comic in New York, and has contributed to the net humor zines Schmuck.com, Campaign Central, and the legendary American Jerk. He's on medication now so he's probably a little nicer now than he was when you met him earlier. Email - jacksaleeby1@hotmail.com