Life (67 page)

When my daughter Angela married Dominic, her Dartford fiancé, in 1998, we had the party at Redlands, a big and wonderful celebration. Dominic had come to Toronto to ask my permission to marry Angela, and I kept him guessing for two weeks. Poor guy. I knew what he wanted, but he didn’t know I knew he was going to ask and he could never get an opportunity—I’d always create a diversion, or he couldn’t get it up to make his case. And after that I was going on tour. And each morning, even after Dominic had been up past dawn, Angela would say, have you asked him? and he’d say no. Finally, one dawn when the time was running out, I said, for fuck’s sake, of course you can marry her, and threw him a skull bracelet to remember the moment.

At Redlands we put marquees up all over the garden and the paddocks and they looked so good I kept them up for a week afterwards. It was the widest mixture of people you could bring together: all Angie’s friends from Dartford, the tour people, the crew, Doris’s family—people we hadn’t seen for years. There was a steel band playing to start it off, and then Bobby Keys, who Angie’s known all her life, played “Angie” as she walked down the aisle, and Lisa and Blondie sang, and Chuck Leavell played piano. Bernard Fowler read the Confirmation—a little shocked that he wasn’t asked to sing, but Angie said she loved his speaking voice. Blondie sang “The Nearness of You.” We all got up, Ronnie, Bernard, Lisa, Blondie and me, and we played and sang.

Then there was the Incident of the Spring Onions—the spring onions that were supposed to be topping the mash to go with the bangers I was making for myself. Except someone swiped them from under my nose. There were many witnesses to what happened, including Kate Moss, who will give an account of the manhunt that followed.

Kate Moss:
Food of the kind he likes is one of the few comforts Keith has, whereas everything else is all over the shop. And because the hours are erratic, he makes his own food a lot of the time. That’s what he was doing the night of Angela’s wedding. It was about three in the morning. Everyone was partying, it was a beautiful evening, everyone was outside drinking, dancing, it was a big wedding, still going strong. And Patti and I were in the kitchen, and Keith was making his sausages and mash. And he had his spring onions. The sausages were on, the potatoes were boiling, I was standing by the Aga, talking to Patti, and he turned round and said, where have my spring onions gone? And we were like, what? He said, I just had them, they were just there, where have they gone? Oh God, we thought, he’s out of it. But he was so indignant, we started going through the dustbins. He was saying, they were
definitely
here, so we’re looking everywhere, under the tables… “I’m
sure
they were there.” And he was getting really angry. And we said, maybe you didn’t put them there, maybe you put them somewhere else? No, I fucking put them there. And everyone thought he was going mad. And a friend of Marlon’s walked through the door and went, Keith, what’s the matter? And Keith said, I’m looking for my fucking spring onions, and he was almost deranged, going through rubbish, and I looked up and it was like those accident scenes in slow motion. You think, noooooooo! Don’t do it! This guy had the spring onions behind his ears. I mean, why would you do that? To get attention, obviously, but the wrong kind of attention. And Keith looked up and saw them too. Explosion. In Redlands he’s got those sabers over the fireplace. He grabbed them both and went running off into the night, chasing this kid. Oh my God, he’s going to kill him! Patti was really worried. We all went running after him, Keith, Keith, and he came back and he was raging. The guy spent most of the night in the bushes. He came back to the party later with a balaclava on so that Keith wouldn’t recognize him.

I
t’s strange,
given my vocation, that I have had dogs since 1964. There was Syphilis, a big wolfhound I had before Marlon was born. And Ratbag, the dog I smuggled in from America. He was in my pocket. He kept his trap shut. I gave him to Mum, and he lived with her for many, many years. I’m away for months, yet the time you spend with pups binds you forever. I now have several packs, all unknown to one another due to the size of the oceans, although I sense they scent the others on my clothes. In rough times I know I can count on canines. When the dogs and I are alone, I talk endlessly. They’re great listeners. I would probably die for one.

At home in Connecticut we have an assembly of dogs—one old golden Labrador called Pumpkin, who comes swimming with me in the sea in Turks and Caicos, and two young French bulldogs. Alexandra picked one up as a puppy and called her Etta, in honor of Etta James. Patti fell in love with her, so we bought her sister, who had been left behind in her cage in the pet shop, and called her Sugar. “Sugar on the Floor,” one of Etta James’s great records. Then there’s a famous dog—famous in the Stones back line—called Raz, short for Rasputin, a little mutt of extraordinary charisma and charm, and I’ve known a few. His history is murky—after all, he’s Russian. It seems that along with three or four hundred other strays, he was working the garbage cans of Dynamo Stadium, Moscow, when we toured there in 1998. Russia had gone into a severe economic downslide and dogs were being dumped all over town. It was a dog’s life! Somehow, while our crew was setting up the stage, he made himself noticed by the riggers and others. They took him in and he became a kind of mascot in a very short time. From the crew, he worked his way into the kitchen, and from there into the wardrobe and makeup departments. From his daily fights for food, he wasn’t looking his best (I know the feeling), yet he touched hard hearts.

When the Stones arrived for sound check, I got a pull from Chrissy Kingston, who works in the wardrobe department, who gushed about this amazing mongrel. The crew had seen him taking kickings and beatings and still coming back. They admired his relentless balls and took him in. “You really must see him,” said Chrissy. I was doing our first gig in Russia, and dogs were not on my agenda. But I knew Chrissy. Something about her intensity, her urgency, the little tears welling in her eyes, checked me. We’re all pros, and I felt that I should take her seriously. Chrissy doesn’t throw you curveballs. Theo and Alex were there, and the infallible “Oh, Dad, Dad, do see him, please” melted even this dog’s heart. I smelled a setup, but I had no defense against it. “OK, bring him in.” Within seconds Chrissy returned with the mangiest jet-black terrier I’ve ever set eyes on. A cloud of fleas surrounded him. He sat down in front of me and fixed me with a stare. I stared back. He didn’t flinch. I said, “Leave him with me. Let’s see what can be done.” Within minutes a deputation of the crew came into “Camp X-ray” (my room), big guys, all beards and tattoos, with moist eyes, thanking me. “He’s a hell of a mutt, Keith.” “Thanks, man, he got to us all.” I had no idea what I would do with him. But at least the show could go on. The mutt seemed to sense victory and licked my fingers. I was sold. Patti looked at me with love and despair. I shrugged. There was an immense operation to get him shots and papers and visas and the rest, and finally he flew into the United States, a lucky dog. He lives as czar of Connecticut, where he coexists with Pumpkin and the cat, Toaster, and the bulldogs.

I once had a mynah bird, and it wasn’t a pleasant experience. When I put music on, it would start yelling at me. It was like living with an ancient, fractious aunt. The fucker was never grateful for anything. Only animal I ever gave away. Maybe it got too stoned; there were a lot of guys smoking weed. To me it was like living with Mick in the room in a cage, always pursing its beak. I have a poor record with caged birds. I accidentally disposed of Ronnie’s pet parakeet. I thought it was a toy alarm clock that had gone wrong. It was hanging in a cage at the end of his house and the fucking thing just sat there and didn’t react to anything, except to make this repetitive squawk. So I got rid of it. Too late I realized my mistake. “Thank Christ for that” was Ronnie’s reaction. He hated that bird. I think the truth is that Ronnie’s not a real animal lover, despite being surrounded by them. He’s a horse fancier. In Ireland he has stables, four or five colts there, but you say, “Let’s go for a ride, Ron,” he won’t go near them! Likes them from a distance, especially when the horse he’s bet on is crossing the finishing line first.

So why is he living with all this shit and dung and three-legged fillies? He says it’s a Gypsy thing. Romany. In Argentina once, Bobby Keys and I were going for a ride and we roped Ronnie in for a third. They were nice quarter horses. If you haven’t ridden for a while, it does hurt your arse, without a doubt. And we went around the pampas, and Ronnie’s hanging on for fucking dear life. “But you own horses, Ronnie! I thought you loved them.” And Bobby and I are cracking up. “Here comes Geronimo. Let’s kick it up a bit.”

C
onnecticut is where
Theo and Alex were brought up, leading as normal a life as possible, going to the local high school. Patti has many relations within striking distance. There’s my niece-in-law Melena, who’s married to Joe Sorena. We’ve made wine in their garage, ending up in that scene where you’re all in the tub with your socks off, pounding away on these grapes, going, “This is going to be the vintage.” It’s fun to do. I’ve done it in France once or twice, and there’s something about squishing grapes between your toes. We even went occasionally on “normal” holidays. There’s a fully equipped and battle-hardened Winnebago parked near my virgin tennis court to prove it. The Hansen family are very big on family reunions, and they’re also very big on camping, and they pick somewhere ludicrous like Oklahoma. I’ve only done it two or three times. But you just drive out of New York and… go to Oklahoma. On one of these trips, thank God I went along or they’d have drowned and had no fire. There was an incredible flash flood and we nearly got washed away—all the usual things, in other words, that happen on camping trips. I was never recognized because I was always drenched in rain. And my Boy Scout training came in very handy. Cut that wood! Get those tent pegs in! I’m a great fire builder. I’m not an arsonist, but I am a pyromaniac.

Entry in my notebook, 2006:

I am married to a most beautiful woman. Elegant, graceful and as down to earth as you can get. Smart, practical, caring, thoughtful and a very hot horizontal consideration. I presume that a lot of luck is involved. I must say that her practicality and logic confound me because she makes sense out of my discursive way of life. Which sometimes goes against my nomadic traits. Applying logic goes against my grain but how I appreciate it. I bow as gracefully as I can.

T
here was a
memorable weekend safari with the children in South Africa, when I nearly got my hand bitten off by a crocodile—a close call for early retirement. We were there only two or three days, in the middle of the Voodoo Lounge tour, and we took along Bernard Fowler and Lisa Fischer. We were in a safari park where all of the employees were white former prison guards. And obviously most of the prisoners had been black. You could see it on the barman’s face when Bernard or Lisa ordered a double shot of Glenfiddich. It was hardly welcoming. Mandela had been released five years earlier. Lisa and Bernard went out to seek this moment and do their roots thing, and they came back really pissed off. All they got was blacks not welcome. Nothing seemed to have changed from the old apartheid attitudes.

One morning, we’d been up all night and I’d been asleep about an hour and I really wasn’t ready for it, but they scooped me up and put me in the back of this open safari truck. I wasn’t in the best of moods to start with, jolting around in the back, and it wasn’t “Oh my God, it’s Africa,” it was just scrub and bush. Suddenly we come to a halt on a little side turn. Why are we stopping now? There are some rocks and a cave mouth. At that very moment, out comes my image of Mrs. God—a warthog. It’s got a mud pack all over its face and it stands there snorting steam right in front of me. This is all I need now—these tusks—and it just looks at me with its little red eyes.… It was the ugliest creature I’d ever seen, especially at that time of day. That was my first encounter with African wildlife. Mrs. God, the one you don’t want to meet. Excuse me, could I see God, please? Maybe I could come back tomorrow? Talk about coming home and getting the rolling pin. I started to see curlers and one of those old housecoats. Steaming with energy and venom at the same time. Which is wonderful to watch, but not when you’ve slept for an hour and have a terrible hangover.

Now we’re jolting down the track again, and a very nice cat, a black guy called Richard, is perched on the back of the Land Rover, spotting things, and there’s this huge pile of something, and Richard says, hey, watch this. He chops off the top of this pile, and out flies a white dove. It was elephant crap. There are these white birds that follow elephants and eat the seeds that they haven’t digested. Their feathers are covered in an oil so they’re not actually covered in crap. And they can breathe under that pile for hours and hours. In fact they eat their way out. But it was pristine, like the dove of peace, totally immaculate, as it flapped away. Next we go round this bend and there’s an elephant, big bull, right across the road. And he’s busily tearing down two trees about thirty feet tall, he’s wrapping them up together, and we stop, and he sort of gives us one look, like “I’m busy,” and he carries on ripping out these trees.

Then one of my daughters said, “Oh, Daddy, he’s got five legs,” and I said, “Six including the trunk.” His cock was on the ground, eleven foot long. Humbled, I was humbled. I mean, this gun was loaded. In fact, on the way back, Richard said, look at the tracks there, and there were these huge elephant tracks and a line down the middle which was its cock trailing on the ground. We saw some cheetahs. How do we know they’re around? Because there’s an antelope in the goddamn tree, dangling. A cheetah has dragged it and stashed it up there. Next the water buffaloes, three thousand of them in a marsh. These things are amazing. One of them decides to have a shit, and before it hits the ground, another has come up behind and caught it and eaten it. They’re drinking their own pee. And then, to cap it all, let alone the flies, suddenly in front of us is a female giving birth, and all of the bulls are having a bash at the placenta! What more can we stand! We get out of there, and on the way back, the stupid driver stops beside this puddle, pulls out a stick and goes, hey, look at this! And he pokes this puddle. And I’m just sort of hanging around the back, I’ve got my hand dangling over the edge, and I feel this hot breath, and I hear this snap, and the jaws of this croc must have missed me by a goddamn inch. I almost killed the guy. Crocodile breath. You don’t want to feel it.