The world needs a Keith Richards autobiography about as much as it needs a new Rolling Stones record. And if you’re scoring at home, that’s not very much.

But publishing house Little, Brown and Company begs to differ, and ponied up $7.3 million last week to the rights to the legendary guitarist’s book in the works. The company has banked on the 2.5 million people who bought his band’s 2005 release, “A Bigger Bang,” being equally interested in thumbing through his life’s story.

That might be true. There still are legions of people who swear by the genius of the legendary axe man. Richards is in fact one of music’s most iconic figures. He’s penned the signature riffs to several of the all-time greatest unadulterated rock’n'roll songs and helped usher in the long-lasting ideology of the drinking, drugging, sexing rock star. Although he never has been in the world’s greatest band, from 1964-74 he was in arguably the coolest one, and he was the most brazen member of the bunch.

The problem, however, with continuing to blindly buy every concert ticket, album or now book that features the Stones’ unmistakable “Tongue and Lips Design” logo is that the group hasn’t made a front-to-back great record since 1972′s “Exile on Main St.,” and hasn’t produced a good LP since “Some Girls” in 1978. Which leaves Richards and the guys just shy of three decades of mediocrity. Admittedly, his musical output directly doesn’t affect the relevance of the upcoming autobiography; it speaks to his waning muse.

The past 30 years have watched Richards digress from street-hardened mod to someone more akin to a drunken townie at the end of a college bar, tragically slurring his speech and picking crumbs out of his stubble. During that same time period, The Rolling Stones – because or possible despite of Richards – have toured the largest stadiums on every corner of the globe, including a gig last year in Brazil to a single audience of 1.3 million people. As the other Stones mature into old men with a level of dignity that has resulted in Mick Jagger’s knighthood courtesy of the Queen of England, Richards continues to stumble through his golden years with the type of grace that would make Dudley Moore’s “Arthur” seem sober.

And while all those sleepless nights and after-hours cocktails might make for some pretty interesting stories, they also lend themselves well to pretty fuzzy mornings after and even fuzzier memories – memories that Richards will be counted on to remember while writing his memoirs.

Wayne C. Booth coined the term “the unreliable narrator” in the literary critique, “The Rhetoric of Fiction.” It’s the understanding that a storyteller within a piece differs from the author, and that a character contained within a plot cannot always be trusted the same way. Richards is an unreliable narrator.

In April he caused a stir when he was quoted in NME saying, “The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated, and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow.”

Unfortunately, it’s not hard to picture the freewheeling musician mixing his father’s remains with cocaine and giving it a try. However, the day after the quote was published, Richards’ manager Jane Rose released a news statement in which the guitarist denied the event, said the quote was “in jest” and that the ashes were planted alongside an oak tree.

“I took the lid off the box of ashes,” Richards said in the statement, “and he [Richards' father] is now growing oak trees and would love me for it!”

The story disappeared for a few months, until this current issue of NME. In the pages of the music magazine, Richards refers to the infamous quote and says, “The cocaine bit was rubbish. I said I chopped him up ‘like cocaine,’ not with. I pulled the lid off [my father's urn] and out comes a bit of dad on the dining room table. I’m going, ‘I can’t use the brush and dustpan for this.’ What I found out is that ingesting your ancestors is a very respectable way of… y’know, he went down a treat.”

If he can’t seem to make up his mind whether he buried his father’s remains in 2002 in the ground or sucked them up through a straw with or without a cocaine cutter, how can he be expected to remember the finite details of conversations from decades ago?

Answer: He can’t be.

Yet for every unreliable narrator, there is an author. And in the case of The Rolling Stones, there have been many.

Internet sales giant Amazon lists more than 400 books about the band. Borders tallies more than 180, while Barnes & Noble offers more than 120. The truth is, there is no way to know exactly how many paperbacks, hardcovers, books on tapes and photo volumes chronicle The Rolling Stones. There are just too many, and more come out each year.

What we do know, though, is that the group’s other guitarist – a legend in his own right from his days in the Faces and The Jeff Beck Group – Ron Wood, has an autobiography due before year’s end. Bill Wyman, who played bass with the band for 31 years, has released two books. The first was a publication of his daily journals kept during his Rolling Stone days titled “Rolling with The Stones,” and the second was the autobiography “Stone Alone.”

The Rolling Stones’ story has been told. Many times. By people with better recollections.

At least Jagger knew to quit while he was ahead, halting his memoirs attempt after a few weeks because he claimed that he couldn’t remember what really took place.

If Richards thinks he has something left to say, great. We’ll see. And if Little, Brown and Company believes that something to be worth $7 million, that’s their prerogative. But they had better classify the book where it belongs – slated in Historical Fiction.

Northwest Herald, Aug. 9, 2007