Fame is a Double Edge Sword Keith Richards' Lost Weekend

Suddenly, the Stones were making some bread.

I was going to buy them... And I set Mum up in

a nice house that she likes and dah-dah...

And the weirdest thing being that,

within a year of me leaving home,

Mum and Dad separated.

The cuckoo's flown the nest!

And I took care of Mum, you know?

My dad, I had no contact with him until...

1982.

It was, like, 20 years later.

And I meet this bloke...

..that is totally different from the man I grew up with.

Because I meet this little old...

For him as rummy...

and the pipe and rum, and that's the bit of me

that I never got to know and so for the next 20 years,

we lived together like that, you know? Like mates.

And it was a great, great feeling. Yeah.

Because I've been able to love my mum and finally get back

together with the old man, and what an old bugger.

And I showed him the world.

"Come on, let's get on the plane and do this!"

And, you know...

And he was amazed and I heard from other people that

he's very proud of me, which is, you know...

You see, he worked for General Electric, making valves.

And when I showed him what I worked with, which is, like,

you know, Fender amplifiers, Gibson and that...

..he would tell me every valve.

"Oh, that's the A43, that's the 89."

And suddenly I realised a weird connection between our lives.

Without my amplifier, I'm nowhere.

And he could tell me how it was built.

# Just because you find yourself

# Off the streets again

# That don't mean that I can't help you

# Or I ain't your friend

# Baby, trouble is your middle name

# Your trouble is that that's your game

# Now you're out of circulation

# Out of reach and out of touch

# Let me keep you in the loop

# Though I can't tell you much

# Baby, trouble is your middle name

# Your trouble is that that's your game

# Oh, yeah

# Ooh, baby, trouble. #

And now, let's meet our first contestant.

Will you come in and sign in, please.

APPLAUSE

All right, panel, as you probably have realised,

there is an area of identification here that might be in

appearance, costuming, name, some area of identification which

would give you too much information, so you're blindfolded.

Let's let the folks and our friends here in the theatre

know exactly what your line is.

APPLAUSE

Right.

Panel, our guest, who must also be an unnamed, is self-employed.

With that, let's begin the general questioning with Arlene Francis.

Are you associated with any of the arts?

Yes.

Um...

Would you ever have been seen on television?

Yes.

Are you a performer?

Yes.

Um, would you be considered a leading man?

Yes.

RIPPLE OF LAUGHTER

May I... I've got to move in here.

Actually, in the general context of the questioning,

we would have to accept that all the affirmative replies,

except perhaps the last one, are not misleading in any major degree.

However, I think the last answer IS misleading and we could not

accurately describe our guest as a leading man.

He's a misleading man! A misleading man, yes.

One down and nine to go. Mr Cerf.

Have you achieved eminence in some field other than television?

Yes.

Would it be the sort of exploit that might possibly reach

the front page of a newspaper?

Yes.

Is it an exploit that's been on the front page of

the newspapers within the past couple of weeks?

Um, no. No? Two down and eight to go. Miss Kilgallen.

Um, do you imagine that we're blindfolded because

one or more of us would recognise you at sight?

Yes.

Hmm? Yes.

Yes.

Are you accustomed to appearing before audiences?

Yes.

When you appear before audiences,

do you ever wear less then you're wearing now?

LAUGHTER

When you appear before audiences,

do you ever wear less than you are wearing now?

I would say that under certain specific conditions,

it is not impossible that our guest would wear less than is

being worn now, but it's not necessarily germane to what

it is we're trying to arrive at.

Is that a yes or a no? LAUGHTER

That is a kind of up-and-down "yes".

All right. Do you have anything to do with...

sports or any form of athletic endeavour?

Yes. LAUGHTER

Small conference.

THEY QUIETLY CONFER

Yes. All right.

Now, I think it would be too misleading to suggest that

our guest had a basic affiliation with sports.

This is not to say that it's not within the compass of his enjoyment

to indulge in this particular endeavour. Thank you.

Three down and seven to go. Mr Lawford.

Do you appear continuously on television?

By that I mean once a week or once a month, can I see you?

No. No. Four down and six to go. Miss Francis.

Do you use anything in your hands for your job?

Yes.

Would you be considered a writer? Yes.

LAUGHTER

There's nothing this man doesn't do.

What we have to guess is an all-around man.

Are you well-known because of a book that has been published of yours?

Miss Arlene, if I may interrupt here,

I would have to agree that we must consider that our guest is a writer.

We're going to agree that we must consider that our guest is a writer?

LAUGHTER

The talents of our guest are not encompassed entirely in this area of work.

Oh. Then you can do several things? Except sports.

That a fair assumption, yeah. Uh-huh.

Does he write humorously?

Yes and no. LAUGHTER

The answer then, I think, is properly yes and no.

Oh.

Um...does he ever do any drawing, like comic strips?

Yes. LAUGHTER

Yes?

Is there something quite unusual about our guest?

LAUGHTER

I beg your pardon, Arlene? APPLAUSE

I just ask if there is something unusual because everything

that he does, the audience laughs about.

You are a human being? LAUGHTER

Very much so, Bennett. Very much so.

Have you ever written a book that was published by my firm?

Yes. LAUGHTER

Is it possible that we have not yet struck upon

the major thing that our guest is famous for?

That is very possible.

He is still maintaining that he's a performer?

Well, yes,

in the degree that he was asked if he had anything to do with

the arts and then was asked if he was a performer.

In that large context, we would have to accept

that he was indeed a performer.

THEY QUIETLY CONFER

ARLENE FRANCIS: Do you want a conference?

Yes, I'd love a conference, Arlene.

Was there a call for a conference? May we have a conference, John?

You may have 15 seconds for a conference,

and I'm going to give you one minute more to get it.

Ask if he could use his moustache to paint. Oh!

Oh.

Have you a moustache that is rather well-known,

in fact, could you be almost caricatured just by that?

Yes.

Oh, well, thank you, Arlene. Are you Salvador Dali?

Salvador Dali is right. APPLAUSE

MUSIC: Fame by David Bowie

Fame.

Fame is something that everybody who isn't, wants to be, you know?

At the same time it's...

You'd better learn to live with it if you want to be famous.

With the Stones, we didn't want to be famous,

we just wanted to make records,

and you immediately realise that

in order to make a record, then it's PR and then it's fame,

you know, almost immediately.

You kind of saw the effect it had

differently on different people around you, you know?

I mean, I guess Brian Jones would be the famous example.

One minute he's part of the band, great guy, you know, we're playing.

Two weeks of fame and the man has gone bye-bye.

Sky-high.

That was the first illustration to me about fame, you know,

with somebody I knew closely and we worked together

getting this ancient form of weaving down.

You know, we had two guitars sound like one,

and you don't care who's doing what.

And suddenly...

..it was pie in the sky

and, you know...whoa.

And when you're working that hard, you're working 350 days a year, man.

You know, bam, bam. Nonstop, you know?

This is hard, hard road work

and you don't have time to carry passengers.

So you get antsy, you know?

Mick certainly changed through fame.

I probably have too, to a certain extent,

but I mean, I've always...

kind of...

I'm very anti-showbiz and

get carried away by it.

To me it would be...

a sort of failure of the spirit.

There's a lot of downsides to fame, you know?

I really have a fear of basically...

Not a fear, but I just don't go to movie houses,

I don't go to cinemas,

because I find myself sitting there looking at the exit signs

and just waiting for one asshole to go,

"It's Keith Richards!"

and then I ruin the movie for everybody and I go do a runner.

A lot of things get taken away from you by being famous.

I'd like to be famously anonymous, really.

Fame's the two-edged sword.

And it's ouch. Whichever side of the blade cuts you,

it's going to cut you.

But you live with it,

and I mean, I've been 19,

I've been a bloody star, you know?

I've been anti-star, you know...all the time,

but I realised it's a losing fight, quite honestly.

Some people love it.

Ronnie loves being famous

and he can handle it.

He doesn't mind bumping into crowds of people going,

"Hey, Ronnie, I love you!"

and bless his heart.

But I did a lot of hiding, you know,

hence the heroin. Yeah.

It was my escape, you know?

Night-time brings on ideas of mystery, possibilities, dreams.

Even though you're awake, you're dreaming.

# Last night your shadow fell upon my lonely room

# I touched your golden hair and tasted your perfume

# Your eyes were filled with love the way they used to be

# Your gentle hand reached out to comfort me

# Then came the dawn

# And you were gone

# You were gone, gone, gone

# I had too much to dream last night

# Too much to dream

# I'm not ready to face the light

# I had too much to dream

# Last night

# Last night

# The room was empty as I staggered from my bed

# I could not bear the image racing through my head

# You were so real that I could feel your eagerness

# And when you raised your lips for me to kiss

# Came the dawn

# And you were gone

# You were gone, gone, gone

# I had too much to dream last night

# Too much to dream

# I'm not ready to face the light

# I had too much to dream

# Last night

# Last night

# Oh, too much to dream

# Oh, too much to dream... #

Night-time, you feel an extra sense of freedom than you do in the day.

And I guess you can get addicted to it,

or you get so used to it that it becomes normal.

Good evening.

Alfred, well, he's so intriguing, ain't he?

You still wonder what the dirty old man was up to.

He had a way of telling a story.

39 Steps, that opening scene in the musical with Mr Memory...

Mr Memory. APPLAUSE

..and the MC and the bloke going,

"What causes pip in poultry?"

You know, it's brilliant cinema.

I can still remember the song.

HE SINGS TUNE

See, musical.

And then, of course, the whole thing's changed with the gunshot.

GUNSHOT It was the usual McGuffin, you know,

the missing finger.

We all know Alf made many others,

but I thought that one is particularly British.