Marc Maron: Hey man! Nice to meet you!
Keith Richards: Pleasure, man.
MM: Wow…let’s do it!
KR: Okay! …we’re on?
MM: We’re on!
KR: Here we go. [laughs]
MM: I got my nicotine candies – you got yours?
KR: [laughs/coughs] Oooh baby, yeah.
MM: You got the real ones! Ooh, I miss them. Marlboro Reds…
KR: Yeah man.
MM: I actually thought about smoking…I thought if there was a time to start again, it’d be with you.
[laughter]
KR: Okay.
MM: Lemme just hold one!
[Richards hands Maron a cigarette]
MM: …yeeaah.
KR: You can just look at it if you like.
MM: Thank you very much.
KR: Yeah, man.
MM: What are we drinking this afternoon?
KR: Nuclear waste.
MM: Oh perfect. That’s good, you’ve adapted to it, no problem.
[laughter]
KR: I’m ahead of the game.
MM: [laughs] I figured you’d drink nuclear waste – you have to, right? Just to keep going?
KR: Oh, just to talk to you.
[laughter]
MM: I’m dying to figure out when I’m gonna light this fuckin’ cigarette. You know what’s interesting…
KR: Let’s see if you can hold out.
MM: Okay. I’ll try, I’ll try. It’s been about a decade. I talked to you briefly on the phone – I don’t know if you remember, I’d like to think you would remember – we talked, I told you I started smoking because of you, I started drinking because of you…
KR: Oh you’re the one.
MM: I’m the one! Good one, that’s good! But it was funny, because I remember reading an interview with you, and they asked you what kind of cigarettes you smoke, and you said “Well Newports, sometimes Marlboro Reds,†so I was about 14 and I went out and got a pack of both and just, you know, played it out, see what stuck.
KR: Yeah, I don’t know where they got the Newports though.
MM: You’ve never said it? Never tried it?
KR: Marlboro Reds, yeah. [laughs]
MM: Well I was walking around with both in high school trying to figure out how to be Keith Richards.
KR: Oh man.
MM: Yeah, it was a rough few years.
KR: I was in school trying to figure out how to be Keith Richards too. Strange, isn’t it?
[laughter]
MM: You figured it out!
[… 40 Minutes Later … ]
MM: Well it seems like you guys, like you said about doing, uh, you know… [pauses] …yeahh, you want me to do it.
[Richards lights Maron’s cigarette]
MM: …about, um… [inhales] Mm-hmm.
[laughter]
MM: Smoking that first cigarette in ten years with Keith Richards…
KR: [laughs]
MM: …I don’t know why I wouldn’t do that. Thanks, man.
KR: I’m a bad influence, man.
MM: Not you, Keith. That sounds so…not you. You’re not a bad influence!
[laughter]
[… 5 Minutes Later … ]
MM: I can’t believe I’m smoking my first cigarette in ten years with Keith Richards in an NPR studio. Huh? Huh?!
KR: How about that!
MM: Fuck everything! We’re smoking at NPR!
[… 10 Minutes Later … ]
MM: All right, well thanks for talking to me. It was a real honor – really fuckin’ amazing.
KR: Pleasure, man. I’d rather laugh. And you smoked your first cigarette in ten years.
MM: Yeaah, with Keith Richards!! Come on! Thanks, man.
KR: Pleasure, man.
Go to: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5
Week 10 | Year 10
Animations by Kyle Strope.