A Few Thoughts About Living With Purpose

Cheshire Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderlnd

“If you don't know where you're going, any road'll take you there” ― George Harrison

“If you have a strong purpose in life, you don't have to be pushed. Your passion will drive you there.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart

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What a contrast between the Alice in Wonderland excerpt above and the Roy Bennett quote.

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"It’s important to have a purpose. I have seen lives filled with loneliness and despair when no specific purpose has been embraced. On the other hand, I have seen drastic improvements in psychological well-being when people have identified a meaningful purpose."  --Brad Klontz Psy.D., CFP

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When Keith Richards & Mick Jagger met at the train queue they each discovered they weren't alone in their love of the Chicago blues. The moved in together and made a commitment: no dating, no jobs, no distractions... just learn how to play the music they were hearing on these records they scored from America. They had a purpose. It became the focus of their lives and because of their commitment, they learned the music indeed, which opened doors they never dreamed existed.
(Keith Richards' Life.)

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Like everything else, there is a counter-balancing truth that should accompany our purpose-driven activities. That is, purpose-driven living can have a dark side. Is the purpose a worthy one? I think here of Captain Ahab and his quest for the great white whale Moby Dick. His obsession not only cost him his life, it cost the lives of most of his crew. I think here of the damage wrought by Bernie Madoff, as well as Adolph Hitler's megalomania. I think here, too, of the quest for wealth, power and status which can all be achieved while still leaving the soul empty.

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I'll close off here with a handful of observations from the author of Man's Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a Nazi concentration camp survivor whose insights from that experience have been published and nurtured people all over the world.

"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom."

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"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

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"Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way."

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"When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure."

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"Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning. The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her own life."

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Meantime life goes on all around you. Engage it.

A Few Anecdotes About Charlie Watts Including the Time He Punched Mick in the Face

I don't like drum solos, to be honest with you, but if anybody ever told me he didn't like Buddy Rich I'd right away say go and see him, at least the once. ~ Charlie Watts

I was a Rolling Stones fan very early on, in part a over-reaction against those moptops so idolized by the girls in my junior high school (i.e John, Paul, George and Ringo). At one time I had all their albums from 12 x 5 through Goats Head Soup. I remember the impact 12 x 5 had on me, especially the opening cuts on each side, "Around and Around" and "2120 South Michigan Street", an instrumental jam set in motion by a Bill Wyman bass riff. The title of the song is drawn from the address of Chess Records where their favorite blues music was recorded.

The frontmen for the group were such that many people may have underestimated drummer Charlie Watts. Unlike the insane antics of drummers like Keith Moon, Watts was simply smooth.

Charlie Watts isn't someone I really knew much about, though 25 years ago I discovered he was more than just a drummer for a major rock band. In the library I found a CD featuring the Charlie Watts Orchestra, Live at Fulham Town Hall. Though the one customer review on Amazon gave it two stars, I personally enjoyed the album quite a bit.

This summer while reading Keith Richards' autobiography Life I relished hearing a few anecdotes about the Stones' drummer that I hadn't known before.

The manner in which Mick and Keith discovered each other is the stuff of legend, each being unaware that anyone else besides themselves was as intensely into the Chicago blues as much as they were. When they teamed up to form the seminal band, they entire lives were devoted to listening to and learning the music. Dating girls was off limits in the beginning. The only thing that mattered was the music.

In the beginning they had no gigs and to get a gig they needed a drummer. They had so little money they shoplifted food so they, along with bass player Dick Taylor, could spend their time practicing and not having to get jobs. The drummer they wanted was Charlie Watts, but Watts had paying gigs with two bands and wasn't about to give up his income to join these newbies. Richards knew Watts was the guy they wanted. He was the real deal and they achieved their aims, acquiring Watts and assembling the core of one of the great rock and roll bands of all time. (Yes, Brian Jones was abducted into the band around this time as well.)

Stories about the Stones are legion, from the massive drug use to their exile from England to the Jagger-Richards separation in the 80s. Charlie Watts as a professional drummer kept himself out of the maelstrom, living apart from the band as they were recording Exile on Main Street in the south of France. Like many musicians it's a night owl life. On one occasion, according to Richards, Mick was in the mood to do some recording -- at five in the morning -- so he called Watts on the phone and said, "Where's my drummer?" Says Richards, these were the days when Mick's ego had gotten onto everyone's nerves, that it seemed all was about him.

Watts got into his car and 20 minutes later arrived at the place. When Keith opened the door Watts walked right past him, went over to Mick, picked him up by the lapel and slugged him in the face. "Never call me your drummer again." Here's an excerpt from Life with Johnny Depp narrating how Keith remembered it.

Whether this happened the way Richards described it in his book may or may not be entirely accurate. In fact, the way I remember reading it this summer may also be suspect. Bill German, who produced a Stones fanzine called Beggar's Banquet, wrote that it happened like this.

Here's The Charlie Watts Quintet on Dennis Miller's show in 1994 and here's an interesting Boogie Woogie in Barcelona:

 And so it goes.

Photo credit:Poiseon Bild & Text (press photo by a photographer of the consulting company Poiseon AG in St. Gallen, Switzerland)) - Flickr: The ABC & D of Boogie Woogie (Herisau, 13. Januar 2010)

No Ordinary Life: Keith Richards' Autobiography Gives Rare Inside Account of the Stones and More

There's a reason Robin Leach's show was popular in the late eighties and nineties. He took people where they'd never been, and gave them a glimpse of a life they would never experience themselves. And this is exactly what Keith Richards' autobiography delivers, a life like no other, told straight up by a guy who epitomized the "sex, drugs and rock and roll" ethic. The book is called Life.

I am listening to the audio version of the book, co-authored by Richards and James Fox, read by Johnny Depp (first quarter) and Brit Joe Hurley.  Here are a few of the things that stood out for me or especially interested me, in no particular order.

1. The inside story of how Keith and Mick met and those early days of commitment to the Chicago blues are truly fascinating for rock historians. Keith, Mick and a fellow named Stu were so totally into learning the music their entire waking life was listening to music and practicing. They considered it a violation of their commitment to even go see girls. The shoplifted food in order to survive because they had no money and no gigs. Their biggest initial problem was how to acquire Charlie Watts as their drummer. He played real gigs that paid him and they couldn't pay him anything. This presented a serious problem, a problem they eventually resolved. And the rest, as they say, is history.

2. How Keith and Mick came to be songwriters was exceptionally interesting to me. For some reason I'd never taken the Jagger-Richards team seriously as writers. In reading Keith's account I came to appreciate far more deeply how serious he was about the craft of writing, and how the two worked together bring lyrics and riffs together.

Keith describes the process all writers go through in which they begin to see things from a more detached view, seeing every experience as an opportunity to translate life into a story or poem or, in his case, a song. Sometimes they wrote songs that didn't fit the image the Stones were crafting, and they gave those to others, such as As Tears Go By, which was initially recorded by Marianne Faithful.

3. The role Brian Jones played with the Stones was different from what I thought I knew. Initially he was added value for the boys, but when LSD washed over the scene in 1966 along with fame, Jones began a three year meltdown, never fully recovering his center. Though remarkably talented he became a liability to the group.

A year ago I picked up a copy of Anthony Scaduto's book on Mick Jagger, Everybody's Lucifer, which painted the darkest possible picture of the manner in which Jagger contributed to Brian Jones' death. Scaduto, a former crime reporter, gives the impression that Mick killed Brian Jones. Keith Richard's account of the events surrounding Brian's drowning may indeed have involved an accidental manslaughter, but nothing to do with Mick.

4.  The story of how Decca came to sign the Stones is quite hilarious. It's one of the great stories of rock history how Decca Records turned down the Beatles because, "The guitar is on the way out." By the time Andrew Loog Oldham brought the Stones to Decca, the Beatles were already a phenomenon and Decca was a laughingstock. Not wanting to make the same mistake twice, these suits signed them up, no matter how much they hated what they stood for or disliked them.

5. Richard's perspective on Altamont makes the film Gimme Shelter complete.

6. How Exile on Main Street came to be is a lengthy part of the book. The British tax structure is what make them exiles. Some of the income was taxed at the 82% rate and another kind of income was being filched at a 98% tax rate. George Harrison wrote about this on Revolver: "There's one for you nineteen for me." I didn't realize Harrison wasn't kidding.

There's a lesson here. Critics of the rich want to force them to hand over their wealth through taxation. Why wouldn't they do what the Stones did? "Hey, this is bull--" That's a conundrum that will require creative thinking on the part of better minds than I.

7. Keith Richards has had more cold turkey experiences than any living human that I know of. He speaks graphically about many of these, and we understand that Dante's descriptions of hell may not have been far off. Richards experienced a life with many highs, but some pretty ugly rugged places along the way.

8. Details about drugs and women feature prominently in his life story. Of the former he says straight up, "Don't try this at home."

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Much more can be said, and you can read it all -- or hear it -- here.

The Publishers Weekly review at Amazon states:
Johnny Depp and Joe Hurley capture Richards's rock 'n' roll spirit in a wise, charming, and textured narration of the famed guitarist's memoir. Tracing Richards's trajectory from boyhood in England through the formation of the Stones to the band's rise to world domination, this audiobook is chock-full of frank revelations and enlightening stories behind the music. The three readers do superb turns—but the seemingly arbitrary switches between them can be jarring and confusing. Depp's narration is steady, well-paced, clear, and grounded. He produces a delicious range of voices for dialogue (most notably a drunk judge in Arkansas), and Richards himself sounds a bit like an elderly, bluesy Jack Sparrow. Hurley captures the voice of Richards throughout, narrating in a gritty, growl that is spot-on. And sections read by Richards are a real treat; his raspy voice is unmistakable and haunting. A Little, Brown hardcover. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

One of the other reviewers wrote this:
This memoir, written with the help of writer James Fox, is an intricately detailed account of Keith Richards life, both in and out of music-but mostly in. All the stories are here-the funny, the touching, the horrendous, and the amazing. Some are well known, some weren't even known to Richards-he only hears later, from others who were with him, what went on. And he's put it all in this book. Included are 32 pages of b&w and color photographs (including one of the band, with Jagger driving, in a vintage red convertible, across the Brooklyn Bridge) in two groups, plus photos throughout the book itself chronicling Richards' life. Also of interest is an early diary that Richards kept detailing the bands early gigs and impressions of the music the band played.

The book is called Life. There's nothing quite like it.

Tony Scaduto's Jagger: Everybody's Lucifer (A Book Review)

In the early Seventies Tony Scaduto, a crime reporter for the New York Post, had the good fortune of landing a contract to do a bio on Dylan. His claim to fame here was writing as a journalist rather than a fan. His background on the mafia and crime reporting may have also been carried over into a jaded, hard-boiled Humphrey Bogart-like approach that makes everyone a suspect.

The results must have been successful because other books followed including books on Marilyn Monroe, Sinatra and the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger, the topic of this blog post. Keep in mind that this book was written in near forty years ago, so it doesn't cover anything in the 80's, 90's or current century, which is a large swath of territory.

First, this is not a great book and I was surprised to see some rave reviews at Amazon.com, though I should not have been. And then there is the one-star review which begins, "Skip this book, and read Philip Norman's Mick Jagger instead. Also, read Keith Richards' Life or Sam Cutler's You Can't Always Get What You Want."

I picked up the book knowing that even he didn't consider it his best work. Not sure where I'd read that. Nevertheless, in the Sixties I was a Stones fan. I had most if not all of their early albums. Like many, I was attracted to their "bad boy" image, a clear contrast to the squeaky clean cheerfulness of the Fab Four. The Beatles went on Ed Sullivan in matching suits; Jagger performed there in a torn sweatshirt.

From the opening line Jagger surprised me. The first words were "Brian Jones was still alive back then." After decades without Jones the whole Brian Jones story came rushing back. I remember it making the news when he drowned in his pool, heavy-laden with barbituates and alcohol. Images of Jones with Nico in Hollywood, came to mind  along with bits and pieces of recollection. During his time recording with the Stones he played at least seventeen different instruments.

Where Scaduto takes the story, however, is quite different from what I'd expected. The entire first section (Book One) is about Brian Jones. If you go to the two photo sections, it's photos of Brian Jones juxtaposed with Jagger shots.

Tony Scaduto must have disliked Mick Jagger because every story in the book is written in such a way so as to put the singer in the worst light possible. Throughout the book he refers to Keith Richards as Keith, Marianne Faithfull as Marianne, and Brian Jones as Brian, but Jagger is always Jagger.

Those familiar with the story know that Brian Jones created the Rolling Stones. Over time Richards and Jagger, with the help of their young manager Andrew Loog Oldham, pushed forward to be the front men for the group. Jones's skills were weakening due to his drug use excesses among other things and he was ultimately becoming a detriment to the band. In the end Jones was kicked out and replaced with Mick Taylor.

Scaduto the former crime reporter lays out the details that allege that this power play and additional maneuvers by Jagger and Richards were what killed Brian Jones. Keith stole Brian's girl (Anita Pallenberg) and the band was stolen from him as well. Nothing ever seems to be Brian's fault. These sins of commission were not what finally nailed Brian's fate, rather it was Jagger's sins of omission, his failure to make efforts to suture the emotional lacerations to Jones' fragile soul after this massive humiliation (being evicted from "the world's greatest rock and roll band.") This, it seems, is the picture the author aims to produce.

I don't believe Jagger himself was ever interviewed by Scaduto, who does do a good job of painting pictures of some of the Stones concerts, especially the Stones' 1969 U.S. tour, which ended in the disaster called Altamont. Marianne Faithfull's perspective is a primary source throughout, though the Amazon.com reviewer claims much of this came from her autobiography.

Jagger: Everybody's Lucifer ranks #2,311,587 in the book section, Amazon Best Sellers. You can buy it used for a penny and draw your own conclusions.