How is it that one of the best and most notorious interpreters of the modern blues is a white boy from England?

The blues only reaches and touches certain troubled souls, or as Brownie McGhee put it, "Blues is not a dream, blues is truth." Associated in general with blacks originally from America's Deep South, the blues as a music form has its own history, its own mythology, its own score card of players whose association with pain, heartbreak, and a fear of the devil were all the prices of admission to this sacrosanct club. Enter Keith Richards: He is one of those players.

Think modern guitar heroes and inevitably the name Keith Richards comes to mind. The bluesy, hard-driving rock 'n' roll riffs of the Rolling Stones set a standard for modern music and transformed the image of the guitar from instrument to weapon/symbol to an indispensable part of everyday music.

Author Stanley Booth has known and associated with Keith Richards for over twenty years. Booth explores Keith's past, finding inspiration and new social attitudes emerging from the rubble of World War II that appear to be the essence of the man himself.

Booth's conversations with Keith bring forth Richards's own assessment of his craft and reveal attitudes such as his yin/yang relationship with Mick Jagger, his passion for such blues greats as Furry Lewis and Robert Johnson, what rhythm is to him and that shadowy corner of his soul from whence it springs, and how music has been transformed to become the denominator of social passion around the world.