Keith/Standing in the Shadows [Hardcover]

Stanley Booth (Author), Bob Gruen (Photographer)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1995

An in-depth exploration of the career, influences, and life of rock and roll giant Keith Richards, the lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones, traces his love for blues, his love/hate relationship with Mick Jagger, and much more.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Booth (Rhythm Oil) here professes to set the record straight on the life of Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, the "ultimate rock 'n' roll survivor." Booth's quibbles with previous biographies of Richards seem petty, but his own book is noteworthy because he draws on interviews conducted over a decades-long friendship to let Richards speak for himself. The result, falling between biography and autobiography, is interesting and largely successful. Richards's own account of the energy and excitement of the London music scene in the 1960s and Booth's evenhanded assessment of Richards's well-documented history of substance abuse make for particularly compelling reading. But as a definitive biography, Keith is ultimately sketchy. Virtually disappearing as a subject in the middle of the book as Booth digresses into other topics, Richards remains enigmatic throughout as a result of Booth's reluctance to probe into the life of a subject who is also a friend. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

After years lost in Mick Jagger's media afterglow, Keith Richards has become a hot item. You can't toss a guitar pick without hitting a Keef bio. Booth's second Rolling Stones book tells the story with some new twists. His tone is evocative, even intimate, and the way he disputes other versions of Keith and Stones stories is striking. He's particularly critical of Bockris' Keith Richards (1992). Booth lists several areas of disagreement with Bockris, including even a date discrepancy corrected in later editions. Booth sounds so authoritative you assume he's correct, yet sometimes his contentions are questionable, as when he suggests the Hell's Angels were not hired as security for the Stones' ill-fated Altamont concert. Like many superstar biographers, Booth seems to regard his subject as superhuman and takes great pains to make him appear so. Still, his intimate portrait of one of the great molders of contemporary pop music is, for all its brevity, rich with detail and of great value to rock fans and historians. Mike Tribby

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 211 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr; 1st edition (March 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312118414
• ISBN-13: 978-0312118419
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,330,817 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Keith's Life, February 5, 2004

By 

Riccardo Pelizzo (baltimore, maryland USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Keith: Standing in the Shadows (Paperback)

Stanley Booth's biography of Keith Richards is a pretty good book. It is well researched, it's well written, and it says a lot about Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones. One of the things that make particularly interesting (for those who are interested in Keith Richards anyway)is that Booth knows Keith personally and some of Keith's quotes are taken from personal conversations.
However, the book like many other biographies of Keith and the Stones does not pay much attention to what is really important about Richards--that is, he is one of the greatest rock composers and one of the great music composers of the century.
He wrote, either by himself of with Jagger, some 500 songs. Several of which have defined the terms, the syntax and the grammar of rock.
Yet, biographers pay little if any attention to this simple and quite remarkable fact. I have never read any serious, detailed account of Keith's style. He's the riff master, yes, but what does that mean? Keith often said that he's a juggler rather than a musician. Because he claims that all is doing is playing around with the same notes. Great. But has anybody paid any attention to this? That is to how certain musical patterns emerge from Keith's compositions? To how these patterns have generated various rock classics over the years? To how Keith's use of the open tuning has influenced the way he writes his songs?
My impression is that this biography of Keith, like several others, focus more on the superficial features of Keith's persona and much less on what's really relevant: Keith's music . It's really a pity.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Keith deserves better; Booth has done better, May 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Keith: Standing in the Shadows (Paperback)

That Stanley Booth is one of America's finest profile writers AND a close friend of Keith Richards should have ensured this biography would be a moving, essential read. Instead, it is sloppy and a little sad.
Most disappointing is the fact that a significant chunk of the material seems lifted from Booth's far superior "True Adventures of the Rolling Stones." Admittedly "True Adventures," is great source material, even when cannibalized. Unfortunately, Stones fans must still endure Booth's account of his first meeting with Mick Jagger in which songs such as "Backstreet Girl" and "Connection" are linked to the album "Beggars Banquet" rather than "Between the Buttons."
To be fair, accounts of Keith's childhood and adolescence are enlightening, as are some anecdotes from the '70s and '80s. But this is a book that needed re-thinking, or at least savvy editing. Those who want a fresh, revelatory biography on Keith, or a worthy example of music writing from Booth, will have to look elsewhere.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Keith Is Rock, May 6, 2001

By 

"ionadh" (Texas, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Keith: Standing in the Shadows (Paperback)

Stanley Booth is overqualified, to say the very least, to write this biography of Keith Richards, the muscle behind the music of the Rolling Stones; having toured with the band in 1969, he chronicled the events leading up to their December, 1969 brush with darkness at Altamont. His focus here is not on the whole band, but on the Keith himself, the Human Riff, "the world's blackest white man" and the creator of such rock classics as "Jumping Jack Flash" and "Happy." This book draws heavily from previously published material - that's a drawback; however, said material is superior in almost every respect to just about anything else you'll find about the place, concerning rock music, American culture, sex, drugs, religion, and politics. Booth, a Southern boy, obviously loves how this Englishman took to his own heart the Mississippi Delta blues of black American musicians, and made it into something...else. Booth is not incapable of being critical towards his subject; he is unsparing in his criticisms of Keith's bull-in-a-china-shop lifestyle, his drug addictions and self-denial concerning his addiction problems, but mostly, this book celebrates the life, music, and adventures of the greatest living symbol of rock's defiant spirit.