A Rather Interesting Frontman

Nothing like putting a haggard, wrinkled rocker up front as the face of a new product.

For handbags, no less.

Then again, I am a Stones fan and find it rather amusing.

Keith Richards is the new face of Louis Vuitton, the French maker of luxury handbags and luggage.

The 64-year-old Rolling Stone appeared on a London billboard today and advertising placed in British newspapers. The campaign will feature in magazines throughout March, Antoine Arnault, Vuitton's head of communications and the 30-year-old son of Bernard Arnault, founder of brand owner LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton SA, said in a Feb. 28 interview.

The younger Arnault said the ads are designed to promote Vuitton's heritage in luggage and win back older customers that lost interest as the label became more fashion-oriented. Earlier ads in the campaign featured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and actress Catherine Deneuve. Richards appears with a deeply wrinkled face holding a guitar in a hotel room with a custom- made Vuitton guitar case behind him on the bed.

Remarkably, I don't see a cigarette anywhere.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

Keith Richards reads Goldilocks and the Three Bears



Video courtesy of caroline372

40 Years of Propaganda

Zev Chafets has a funny piece in the LA Times on Rolling Stone's 40th anniversary.

Three-chord propaganda

The editors of Rolling Stone are not at all apologetic about turning rock 'n' roll into three-chord propaganda and laying down a lasting line of generational grievance. On the contrary, they see it as their great accomplishment. Which is why they appeared disconcerted, in recent interviews, by the unwillingness of some family members to follow the script.

Mick Jagger, for example, offered a critique of the war in Iraq that owed more to Brent Scowcroft than Abbie Hoffman. Keith Richards, asked for his views on social change, ventured that it is all a bit confusing these days and steered the conversation to Mozart and Billie Holiday.

Poor Jack Nicholson even admitted that he was "incapable of hating a president of the United States." This was considered so amazing that the editors displayed the quote prominently in a box.

"We seem to be hellbent on destruction," Wenner said during his interview with Rolling Stone's idol-in-chief, Bob Dylan. "Do you worry about global warming?"

To which Dylan replied: "Where's the global warming? Its freezing in here."

Bless his rock 'n' roll heart.

Another look from Ben Fong-Torres.

Keith Richards: "I Snorted My Father"

I think I've heard it all now. And you know what? I believe him.

I wonder if he smoked his bones as well.

Rolling Stone 'snorted father's ashes'

Rolling Stones wildman Keith Richards claims he snorted his own father's ashes during a drugs binge.

Richards made the extraordinary admission in an interview with NME magazine.

"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," he said.

"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared, he didn't give a s***.

"It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

Richards' father, Bert, died in 2002 aged 84.

Read on, it actually gets better. He actually ingested strychnine and lived to tell about it.

He may just be indestructible.

Also at Hot Air.

(Photo via The Keith Shrine)