[FormerACLUmember]

I actually spent an evening with Keith Richards at a now defunct blues club in New York, with my high school friend who is a producer. Richards is a pleasant, gracious, genial end-stage alcoholic who drank and smoked (cigarettes) non-stop all night.

I sat next to Keith and we ended up discussing his dead dad and how he hoped to join him one day. Since Keith looked like death warmed opver, I saw this as soon happening.

[dead]

I also met Keith Richards in NYC. My brother and I sat next to him at a Tom Waits show at The Beacon. (Elvis Costello and Joe Strummer sat behind us - these were some pretty good seats.)

Richards was sitting there a half hour before the show, with the house lights on. I was never a Stones fan, so I had no desire to bother him. But dozens of other people walked up to him and shook his hand and took pictures with him. I chatted with him a little about Waits' band that night. He was really into seeing him, and his rythm section.

He really was incredibly gracious, thanking everybody for the kind words and joking with them.

I was shocked. I just assumed he'd be a surly jerk.