"It's good to be here. It's good to be anywhere."
This is a quote from Keith Richards, infamous guitarist for the legendary Rolling Stones.
So, I am coming up on my birthday in a couple of weeks. Not a cute, cuddly, adorable birthday, but a big old honkin’ birthday. And what with that and other economy-related changes I find myself contemplating life and looking for inspiration. I often find inspiration in my roots, which would include for me sitting in my teenage bedroom playing Stones records over and over and over, and sure enough I realize that everything I ever needed to know can be learned from Keith Richards.
* Here is what Keith has to say about getting older: “Getting old is a fascinating thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.” In a culture where it is commonplace to fight aging with a nip and tuck and injecting botulinium toxin, Keith looks like his life, no apologies necessary.
* He appreciates each day as it comes and knows how to pace himself: “Mick has to get up in the morning with a plan. Who he's going to call, what he's going to eat, where he's going to go. Me, I wake up, praise the Lord, then make sure all the phones are turned off. If we were a mum-and-pop operation, then he'd be Mum.”
* He is a family man of integrity, married 26 years to Patti Hansen.
* Even the coolest of the cool, (Johnny Depp) look to Keith as K-O-O-L.
* He believes in what he does: “You can build a wall to stop people, but eventually, the music, it’ll cross that wall.”
* He has career satisfaction: “You can’t believe how great this job is. I’ll do it as long as people want to listen to it.”
* He shares the glory: “To me, as long as we’ve know each other, I’ve always thought Mick’s most brilliant thing was that he could work in an area two foot square and give a very exciting performance.”
The best of the Keith quotes are a bit colorful for our UW Career Center web site, but I would love to sit and shoot the breeze with this guy. And who knows? It could happen, we never know what may lie ahead.
Meanwhile, I can still listen to this over and over and over:
