Headline: “Rolling Stone Wood Admits He’s Lucky to Be Alive”

Ron Wood lucky to be alive? Maybe, but what about Keith Richards? He looked half-dead 25 years ago, he is still only occasionally coherent – the man has been actively poisoning himself for about 45 years.

Rumor has it he has no blood or organs, yet how many people have used Keith’s longevity to excuse their own self-indulgence? “It hasn’t killed Keith yet, so why should I stop?” The man is a menace to sobriety.

On a dead serious note, Woody has been seriously told to stop smoking:

Doctors have told Wood if he does not quit his 30-a-day cigarette habit he is at risk of catching the respiratory disease emphysema.

“The doctors said that if I give up smoking now I can nip it in the bud — I still have powerful lungs. But they say if I smoke for another year, I could get emphysema and — boom — my lungs could collapse,” Wood told the Sunday Mirror. [Reuters]

I think Wood’s finest moments are on Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story, the Faces’ A Nod Is As Good As a Wink (especially “Stay With Me”), and on the Stones’ Some Girls. Keith’s highlights are too numerous to mention, but the Stones between Beggars Banquet and Exile On Main Street is untopped in the rock canon.