The cynical side of me wonders if this shouldn't be a lesson to all those self-proclaimed music fans who think that their favorite bands can make up money from lost recorded-music sales on the road, but perhaps I should save that particular judgment until Charlie Watts' first lightbulb ad hits the pages of Parade.

New Keith Richards Ad [Velvet Rope]

Few relationships between supplicant and master reflect the "law of identity" as keenly as that between the magazine considered in this space this week and two of the three men on the cover of its April 24 issue. When a major project involving the Rolling Stones is nearing commercial release, the magazine named for the band is right on time. A is A, dogs piss on fire hydrants, commenters complain in Internet fora, and Rolling Stone puts Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on the cover. This is the magazine's nature.

Jagger and Richards share the cover with Jack White, a musician many people over fifty believe makes rock and roll music the correct manner and is thus an artist RS can endorse with gusto. White appears with the pair in Shine A Light, the new Martin Scorcese concert doc capturing a two-night stand from the Stones at NYC's Beacon Theatre in 2006; he also has a new album out with the Raconteurs that's emblematic of emerging music business paradigms, etc., etc.

Senior editor David "this new Stones album is a stunning return to form; its switchblade six-string brings to mind Sticky Fingers" Fricke facilitates "Blues Brothers," a friendly conversation with Richards and White. He calls the Stones' current onstage M.O. "feral" in the piece's intro and goes straight into pig-in-shit mode as his charges hold forth regarding the blues tradition and Stones Cinema. (Fricke doesn't ask White any Raconteurs questions.) There isn't much evidence that Richards is interested in White; he appears to have a vague knowledge of the White Stripes, but he's more invested in conversation along the lines of "heh heh, rhargh, Bo Diddley, ghargh, Chuck Berry, arghle, back in the old days, heh heh."

White doesn't seem at all to bristle at Fricke's frequently retrograde line of questioning: "Do you feel cheated that you won't meet and play with your favorite bluesmen because so many of them are gone?"; and "Despite the generation gap, the blues shaped your lives in similar ways." This is probably because, in all likelihood, White believes that he did miss out on the time when music was rilly rilly great. He nonetheless elects himself for the blues priesthood alongside Richards, Charley Patton, and others: "When you see someone play, you immediately know whether you can connect with them or not. You know you're in the same family. And [gestures towards Richards] I think we are." Kumbayah, my lord...

As for associate editor Brian Hiatt's companion interview (titled "Mick Jagger"), it's clear to Your Correspondent that the interviewee devoted the same amount of time and thought to Hiatt's questions that he would for the Topeka Pig Testicle stringer who was slotted in between 3:45 3:50 p.m. on Shine A Light's New York Press Day. Which does make YC ruminate on just how Jagger regards Jann Wenner. According to Robert Draper's Rolling Stone: the Uncensored History, Wenner more or less devised Rolling Stone as a way for him to meet Jagger, who has since clearly been the crown jewel in Wenner's constellation of fancy friends.

But YC wouldn't be surprised if the notoriously cold-eyed Jagger considers Wenner his plaything, a sycophant who can be counted on to do his bidding and marshal every available resource to emphasize the greatness of his band while Jagger himself exerts little effort (and does Richards have less disguised contempt for Wenner?). Given the special relationship between his band and Wenner's mag, YC thinks that Jagger might lift a finger to make this interview more substantive, but no dice—although he repeatedly refers to his band in the piece in the third person ("they have lots of other kinds of facets which make them kind of interesting").

YC did learn some things from senior editor and film critic Peter Travers' interview with Scorcese. Travers notes that "no one asks 'Who Killed the Kennedys?' in 'Sympathy for the Devil,' and in 'Some Girls,' Jagger never sings 'black girls just wanna get fucked all night..." in the film's performances, to which Scorcese replies "that was the band's decision." Boy, them Stones don't shy away from confronting middle-class prudishness, huh? Scorcese also says that Richards sings but doesn't play guitar on the film's performance of "You Got the Silver"; YC is fairly sure that Richards croaking away onstage without a guitar is unprecedented (set YC straight if he's wrong, y'all commenters who bother with music recorded more than 30 years ago).

Of course, the Stones luv ain't stop there! In the reviews section, Rob Sheffield gushes purple in a four-star review of the deluxe edition of Shine a Light's soundtrack: "like any live Stones album," he writes, "this one is about the World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band rediscovering how great they are." YC hasn't seen the film nor heard any of the album's cuts, so he'll just say that any of the audio-centric souvenirs released after every Stones tour he's heard in the last twenty years struck him as the band rediscovering that enough goofballs will buy anything bearing the band's name. He'll also say that he's pleased to hear that the band has dusted off "She Was Hot," YC's favorite of their '80s tunes.

As for Jack White, senior editor Melissa Maerz concludes in a three and a half-star review of the Raconteurs' Consolers of the Lonely that the record "feels like a jam session." Her judgment seems to preclude the half-star necessary to hasten the album toward classic status, so it seems that no matter how many rockist values he holds dear, White will have to wait another 15 years before he joins RS' automatic five-star club.

All in all, his life sounds pretty much as you'd expect, lots of laying around on the beach, strumming his guitar and reading ("I've read every book ever written. I'm running out. Somebody please write one!"). Even if Keith wasn't laboriously working on his autobiography ("I can't even remember yesterday...and since I didn't keep a diary it's a bit difficult"), smoking bans would probably keep him up in a palm tree anyway. There he wouldn't be reduced to eating his own cigarettes, as he did last August in what was threatened to be their last London show.

"It's a drag because you've got to freeze your balls off to light a cigarette, you've got to go outside. "It's draconian - socially, politically-correct bullshit. That's what it is. They'll get over it. It's like prohibition, they tried to stop booze once. Ha, look what happened. It ruined America."

America ruined? Southern man don't need you around, anyhow. Unless you're carrying.

Keef: I Can't Remember Yesterday [The Sun]
Stones Stones London 26 08 2007 [YouTube]

"This is a first!" the 63-year-old rock star wrote in a letter published by Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter. "Never before have I risen to the bait of a bad review.

"But this time ... I have to stand up ... for our fans all over Sweden ... to say that you owe them, and us, an apology."

Dagens Nyheter said it received the letter from concert organizer EMA Telstar. Company head Thomas Johansson told The Associated Press that Richards wrote the letter and gave it to him after reading translations of the Swedish reviews.

"There were 56,000 people in Ullevi stadium who bought a ticket to our concert — and experienced a completely different show than the one you 'reviewed,'" the letter said.

"How dare you cheapen the experience for them — and for the hundreds of thousands of other people across Sweden who weren't at Ullevi and have only your 'review' to go on.

"Write the truth. It was a good show."

WTF? When did Keith Richards turn into the singer from a mid-level indie rock band writing a bitchy blog riposte to a bad Pitchfork review? Is he getting soft in his doddering years? Man up and take it already, Keith.

Keith Richards Fumes Over Poor Reviews [Yahoo via AP]

Publishers Marketplace [Official site]

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Keith Richards: read the interview the world is talking about in full [NME]

In an entry titled "Keith please cease breathing," Mogwai's Barry Burns writes:

Hi everyone. I just woke up to find that average blues guitar peddlar and all round unlikeable London pirate-like arsehole Keith Richard snorted his dad's ashes on a drug binge. Well done Keith, you talentless publicity hungry horrible prick of the highest order. He then goes on to say modern bands are a load of old crap. Right, but can we really listen to the opinions of a nasal cannibal?

Keith, your band are possibly the worst band in the history of human events, worse even than Placebo and The Reynolds Girls combined. Your posh English singer sings with an American accent about a load of old American prostitutes he met once and your guitar licks are Grade F. The sooner you die the quicker my Ladbrokes bet comes in between you and McCartney you old dick. I hope you kick the bucket in the most humiliating of ways, like on the toilet and then being eaten by your own dog. Stop living and give us peace you attention seeking non relevant oxygen thief.

Barry

We don't really have anything to add except this: The Reynolds Girls' one hit, the Stock Aitken Waterman-produced "I'd Rather Jack," contains a dis of the Rolling Stones in its chorus, making Burns' entry even more cutting. However Richards responds, it'll be really hard to find a song that speaks ill of Mogwai, no?

Keith please cease breathing. [mogwai.co.uk]
Earlier: Introducing The Keith Richards Snort-Story Collection

BEST HEADLINE The Post's "Father Nose Best" line: Simple and straightforward, it admirably combines the patriarchal angle with the shoving-stuff-into-noses angle.
BEST MULTIPLE USES OF ALLITERATION The Daily News takes this one, employing both "leathery legend" and "creepy concoction" in the same sentence.
BEST STONES-RELATED WORDPLAY IN A LEDE The Post wins again: "What does an aging rocker do for a 'Start Me Up?' Snort his dead father's ashes, of course." We also would have accepted "Keith Richards is 'happy' (when he's snorting his dead father's ashes" and "Have you seen your father, Keith Richards, standing in your nostril?"

"I SNORTED MY FATHER" [New York Post]
Blow-by-blow from Keith [New York Daily News]

Ol' Keef is all thumbs as he and his cavernous, cavernous rib cage address the press room.

[Photo: WENN]