Think about it: why should we be surprised that Keith Richards would write such a wonderful book?

The man has sustained a five-decade career as a great rock ’n’ roll storyteller and performer, so he knows a lot about economy of language and pacing and all of those other things that propel us through the book’s 564 pages with the frenetic energy of his guitar playing on “Hang Fire.”

Life (Little, Brown, $29.99) is a book of immense delights. It’s full of great back story and geekish rock’n’roll lore. It’s also fascinating to hear a creator talking about his creations. Perhaps what’s most surprising is the loving, affectionate voice that comes through. Doesn’t seem to go with his image.

Ah – the image. Keith admits that he did play that up a bit. Once he was named to the rock-star-most-likely-to-die-next list, he thought it might be a good idea to play up to that, and he did. Like his good friend Hunter S. Thompson, who watered and manured a public image not quite in line with his day-to-day reality, Keith knew how to give the public what they wanted. Opposite the in-your-face strutting of Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones needed the second banana to be aloof, mysterious and dangerous.

And the public Keith Richards was all of that. But he was and is a lot more.

I dog-eared a lot of pages reading Life, and I think I like the sweet passages about his mother the most. He was an only child, loved but not quite doted upon. He also deeply loved his parents – all three of them. There was his mother and his stepfather as well as his father, who dropped out of his life for 20 years, but then stepped right back into it, becoming a great friend to his rock star son (and from whom he asked nothing, unlike Fred Lennon who approached his Beatle son after a lifelong absence, demanding money.)

This article appears in Feb 3-9, 2011.