A not-so-complimentary view of Keith and one of the darker episodes mentioned in
Life:
Gimme Shelter: Keith Richards Still Raging Over Scott Cantrell Suicide
Chris Epting
Contributor
(Dec. 1) -- Keith Richards' autobiography, "Life," is an international best seller and, as David Fricke of
Rolling Stone calls it, "one of the greatest rock memoirs ever."
As a Stones junkie since the age of 11, I was eager to read the book, and in a lot of ways I think it's very good. But something jumped out at me -- sickeningly -- on pages 419 and 420.
In the passage, the 66-year-old rock legend recounts the apparent suicide that took place at his South Salem, N.Y., home in 1979. While he and the band were in Europe, 17-year-old Scott Cantrell shot himself in the head while allegedly playing Russian roulette in bed with Anita Pallenberg, Keith's infamous paramour and mother of several of his children.
It was shocking news then, and reading Keith's account years later, I can't believe how brutally unkind he is toward the poor kid.
I grew up in the South Salem area, and I remember meeting Cantrell, not long before his death. I'm sure it's easy to rage against a guy who slept with your wife. But it's years later, and Keith wasn't exactly known as Mr. Fidelity.
Indeed, "Life" doesn't deal with death very well.
At the time, according to the book, Keith and Anita were rich and powerful enough to get as high as they needed while remaining safe and sound within their protective rock 'n' roll womb. And though they had two young kids, parenthood did little to stem the nearly endless tide of shady characters, needles, pills and powders.
Chris Epting
This is the former Richards residence in South Salem, N.Y., where the suicide took place.
"Things went beyond the point of return with Anita when her young boyfriend blew his brains out in our house. ... The boy had shot himself in the face, playing Russian roulette, the story goes," Keith writes.
"I had met him. He was this crazy little kid, aged seventeen, Anita's boyfriend. I said to her, listen, baby, I'm leaving, we're over, we're finished, but this is not the guy for you. And he proved it. The reason she went with this guy, who was an absolute prick, was, I think, to piss me off."
Keith and Anita's son, Marlon, adds a brutal childhood memory of Scott, and remembers as a 9-year-old sneaking a peek of the "brain matter all over the walls" in the hours after the fatal shooting.
"He kept telling me -- a really nasty kid -- he kept saying he was going to shoot Keith, and that upset me, so I was kind of relieved when he shot himself," Marlon is quoted as saying.
"I don't think he intended to shoot himself, really, just an idiot of seventeen who was stoned, angry, playing with a pistol."
Let's just remember that we're talking about a minor, a local teenager who Keith and Anita brought into their home and allowed to become wrapped up in their bleak, addiction-laden web. I have no idea what the relationship was, but given what is documented in "Life," it's hard to imagine this kid being nearly as dangerous as the many bottom-feeders and vampires the Richards household regularly seemed to attract.
Just how bad an element could this suburban teen have been within the tawdry Richards bunker?
Pretty bad, according to the Richards men. A "prick." An "idiot." Gave a 9-year-old "relief" by killing himself.
Right after the death,
People magazine
covered the story and interviewed Cantrell's family.
"Anita did not bother to call the Cantrells the night of Scott's death, though [Scott's brother] Jim lives only minutes away, and his brother was alive for almost two hours after the shooting. Nor has Anita tried since to explain what happened. ...
"The Cantrells can muster little sympathy for Anita's problems. They are convinced that if Scott hadn't met her he would be alive today. 'People fail to understand that this was a 37-year-old woman and a 17-year-old child,' says Jim."
People also quoted from a then new book written by Keith's former aide Tony Sanchez. "Corruption of innocents became one of Keith and Anita's favorite pastimes," he writes.
Whatever happened, a teenager still shot himself in the head, leaving behind friends and loved ones. The attitude of Keith and Marlon Richards in "Life" seems brutally callous -- kicking the dead in the teeth.
Had I not met Scott myself, I probably would not have reacted as strongly to the passage. But I did, and without knowing about the darkness surrounding that house back then, my friends and I were thrilled to have a Rolling Stone in the neighborhood.
In this excerpt from my recent book,
"Hello, It's Me: Dispatches From a Pop Culture Junkie," I write about that day we met Scott. To us, he just seemed like an easygoing guy who had struck gold -- a live-in opportunity with a Stone. But be careful what you wish for.
"Keith Richards" (Excerpt from "Hello, It's Me")A kid in my high school sat a few of us down in the cafeteria with some highly top-secret news. A friend of his mother, a realtor, had just leased a house in nearby South Salem to none other than Keith Richards. For the next two years, we'd stake out the house on an almost weekly basis.
The house sat right near the road and we 17-year-old Stones freaks had it under surveillance constantly. When People magazine featured Mick and Keith on the cover, inside was a picture of Keith and his son Marlon on a tire swing that was right by the driveway. We snuck up and looked inside a greenhouse window that had been turned into a photo developing room -- incredibly, there were pictures of Jagger there on the front lawn of the house.
We'd dream up excuses to go to the door -- for instance, the day after the band's 1978 SNL appearance we thought he might be there, so we went hawking my little sister's candy bars for school. A nanny answered, called Marlon over to order a dozen or so bars and paid (inside, a huge portrait of Keith hung over a fireplace).
"Keith home?" I meekly asked.
"Sorry," she smiled sweetly. "He's in the city."
Cars with tinted windows came and went as we spent nights in our cars outside the house. We crept onto his lawn one night and swiped an axe -- not a guitar-but a real hatchet. But he was too elusive for us.
By 1979, we were graduating high school, moving on -- but we made one last stand at the Keith house that summer to see if he was there. The ruse that day was that our car was out of water and overheating. A buddy and I knocked on the door, and a young guy -- maybe a year older than us -- wearing a frock and holding a sheep-herding staff came around the house. He kindly gave us water, knowing (I think) what we were up to.
"Keith's not here, guys," he said. "He's in Europe."
Foiled again.
Not long after this odd meeting, in July, something terrible happened at the house. As papers around the world reported, a 17-year-old boy named Scott Cantrell shot himself in the head in actress Anita Pallenberg's bed with a gun owned by Keith Richards. According to reports, Cantrell had been employed as a part-time groundskeeper at the estate and was rumored to be involved with Pallenberg in an intimate relationship.
At the time of the shooting, Richards was in Paris recording with the Rolling Stones, but his son with Pallenberg, Marlon, was actually in the home when the tragedy occurred. Pallenberg was arrested, but Cantrell's death was ruled as a suicide in 1980, despite ongoing rumors that Pallenberg and Cantrell had been playing a game of Russian roulette with the gun. Fortunately for Pallenberg, the police investigation confirmed that she was not in the room or on the same floor of the home when the fatal shot was fired.
The kid who gave us water that day was Scott Cantrell, an oft-forgotten Stones casualty who got too close to the fire.
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