BY Michael Davidge

In the society pages of the Summer 2008 issue of Interview, there is one incongruous image that seems perfectly apt: amongst the smiling ingénues in low-cut gowns stands a grizzled old man, his expression somewhere between automated hatred and besotted ambivalence, his head wrapped in white do-rag topped with a fedora. The man holds his left hand aloft, fingers curled back in a fist, excepting his middle finger, which juts into the foreground, the middle fingernail painted pale blue. It is, of course, Keith Richards, guitarist, snapped by the photographer Patrick McMullan at an IMAX screening of the Rolling Stone’s latest concert film, on March 30, 2008. The caption for this particular photograph reads (underlined in the magazine for emphasis), “Keith Richards’ middle finger still works.”
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