Letters to the Editor
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Nonsense
Keith Richards has done some freaky drug stuff? We had no idea!
Didn't Whoopi Goldberg use to do "Slim Fast" ad spots until "Slim Fast" dropped her for saying something Whoopi Goldberg-like?
Who else can we add to the list of celebrities-both-hired-and-fired-for-being-precisely-who-they-hired-in-the-first-place?
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Par for the course?
Should anyone really be shocked at this latest revelation of Richards' behavior?
Yes, they should. This isn't par for anyone's course.
Snorting your cremated father is the most depraved, yet presumably legal, idea I've ever heard.
It is in a class by itself. Until now, we had plenty of cause to doubt Richards' self-control, but never his very humanity.
Disney was right to distance itself from him.
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Thadeus Crumm,
I ask this in all seriousness: What is it about smoking a parent's cremains that is so horribly depraved? It isn't obvious to me.
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Depravity is in the Eye of the Beholder
First, the article is completely correct that we expect Keith Richards to act like the rock star he is. So it's a little disingenuous that now they're shocked -- shocked! -- by his behavior.
Second, while I wouldn't snort the ashes of a loved one, I hardly noticed this little incident until it spread like wildfire. Because depravity is relative. Keith's dad is dead. His ashes were entrusted to his son, who chose to take them into his own body. How's that more objectionable than, say, having his dad's ashes molded into a figurine, scattering them in any number of places, or simply throwing them out? All of these are completely legal because once a body is dead and made non-volatile it's simply an item to be handled by those for whom it was intended or who are compelled to do so for legal reasons.
And finally, no one's compelled to mourn the way you'd like them to.
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Mizbinkley
How about someone eating their parent's corpse?
Would that bother you?
I don't see much difference between the two. It's absolutely inhuman.
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The only thing to condemn the old fart for…
Is chickening out after the fact. Whether it's true or not, it was fucking hilarious. But by trying to claim it was all a joke, he's proved himself to be a total pussy. The bad press was likely hurting his bottom line, and it's common knowledge that at Jagger/Richards, Inc., the bottom line comes before all else.
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Booze and pills and powders, you can choose your medicine...
Hyperbole is the meat and taters of rock and roll. And the NME are the fancy British lords of outlandish rock gossip. Taking a quote in the NME seriously is like trusting Iraq war progress reports from Tony Snow.
Sheesh.
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Barry Burns Is An Idiot And a Nobody
The main difference between Mogwai and the Rolling Stones is that members of the Stones DO blow, while Mogwai simply blows.
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Free Publicity (or am I just totally jaded?)
While I can imagine Keith Richard’s being perfect for the movie I can’t imagine him being at all useful promoting it: I can’t be the only person who can’t understand a word out of the guy’s mouth.
And I doubt Disney really wanted him talking to ‘Entertainment Tonight’ in relation to this film – can you imagine what Richard’s might say to Billy Bush? Yikes!
So they came up with an odd story and it got a boat load of press and now Richard’s no longer has to promote the film. It seems like a win-win across the board.
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Disney is anathema to Rock-n-Roll
I'm no advocate for the inhalation of a dead parent, but part of me is gratified to see somebody from the world of rock-n-roll (albeit a jaded and leathery somebody) do something to remind us that Rock contains wild, primal, Dionysian energies that cannot and should not be captured, packaged, and mass-comodified by dreck merchants like the Disney Corporation.
As the great prophet Iggy Pop once told us: Gimme Danger.
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An Old Friend's Mom Adores Him
My friend's mother is about 75 years old. She used to work as a secretary in the recording industry in the 1970s and 1980s. She was an old-fashioned Gal Friday who did everything from booking châteaux for rocker vacations to making coffee and picking up the dry cleaning. She occasionally drove rock stars to and from the airport or delivered record-company things to them when they were in town, a chore she did not relish. Except for one rock star --- Keith Richards. She absolutely loved him, said he was one of the nicest people she'd ever met. You should have heard her rave about him, you would think he was the quintessential Boy Next Door. Unfailingly polite, gracious, thoughtful, intelligent, a good conversationalist.
True, she was used to moronically arrogant 1970s leotard-and-lion's-mane rockers who thought throwing a micropone up in the air and catching it made them far-fucking-out, man. The kind of dopes who made endless lists of backstage demands and wound up in bankruptcy court by 1992. Still, she swore Keith Richards was one of the nicest, funniest, finest "young men" she'd ever met on the job or off. She sometimes sighed and said to her daughter "Why can't you find someone as nice as Keith Richards, only without the heroin?"
That has to say something about him.
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scruples
so disney has sacked old keith for snorting daddy's ashes - well, it's about time that the disney organisation showed some scruples.
now, if only hollywood and the national media could only follow their shining example.
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Thadeus Crumm, thanks for responding
You wrote: "How about someone eating their parent's corpse? Would that bother you?"
Yes, it would. Mainly because it still looks like a person. I eat chicken but don't like how they include the chicken's head at authentic Chinese restaurants. I don't like my food to look like the animal it came from.
What if the body were chopped up and sauteed with a little garlic and oil, you might ask? Yeah, it's still weird, but less visually disturbing to me.
Ultimately, I guess I consider cremains way different from an actual body. People keep cremains on their mantle, in lockets, sewn into dolls. They vacuum them up and throw them out without much guilt. Not so with corpses. Corpses are still, well, corporeal, too real. Not so with cremains.
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Please...
It was a joke. And what if he did? It was ashes. People get so worked up over the weirdest crap. Janet Jackson has a nipple. Keith Richards does strange things. Please....
One year at the Hawaiian Ironman, a man who was the subject of one of their "Up Close and Personal" stories did the race, the legs other than the swim, with a headband full of his wife's ashes. As he biked and ran, the ashes worked their way out of the headband and were left all over the island- or in the guy's eyes, because he was sweating her ashes all over his face. ABC made it a big story and nobody seemed to care.
"I just woke up to find that average blues guitar peddlar...
Actually, many people consider him to be one of the best rhythm guitarist in R&R.