Friends in 'Life': The Social Network of Keith Richards

Keith Richards and Patti Smith both published memoirs recently. In a previous post I listed the social network of Patti Smith manifested in her book, and today we look at that of Keith Richards from his new book "Life".

Mark Jenkins wrote an article (December 2010) in Washington Post comparing and contrasting these figures and their books, and he identified a few key figures that appear in both works. Of course, a simple network analysis quickly reveals all the personalities found in both works:

Josephine Baker, James Brown, William Burroughs, Donald Cammel, Johnny Carson, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, John Lennon, Gerard Malanga, Anita Pallenberg, Lou Reed, Keith Richards, Larry Rivers, Frank Sinatra, Terry Southern, Phil Spector, Roger Vadim, Andy Warhol, Hank Williams.

The Social Network of Keith Richards
The following is a listing of all names found in the book Life "Life" by Keith Richards and James Fox, Little, Brown and Co., 2010.

Jerry Allison
Duane Allman
Albert Ammons
Robert Altman
Marshall Applewhite
Louis Armstrong
Hal Ashby
Gary Ashley
Jack Aubrey
Theodore Augustus
Stephen Austin
Mick Avory
Dan Aykroyd
David Bailey
Josephine Baker
Chris Barber
Sonny Barger
Bradley Barn
Dave Bartholomew
Julian Beck
Neville Beckford
Bob Beckwith
Heather Beckwith
King Bee
John Belushi
Bob Bender
Ronnie Bennett
Chuck Berry
Mary Beth
Chris Blackwell
Tony Blair
George Blake
Art Blakey
Judge Block
Dieter Bockhorn
Peter Bogdanovich
Bill Bolton
Bob Bonis
Sonny Bono
Pat Boone
Stanley Booth
David Bowie
Brian Boyle
Geoff Bradford
Don Bradley
Bill Broonzy
James Brown
Jackson Browne
Lenny Bruce
Bill Burroughs
William S Burroughs
James Burton
Jim Callaghan
Jimmy Callaghan
Donald Cammell
Richard Du Cann
Laurel Canyon
Johnny Carson
Jimmy Carter
Bill Carter
Johnny Cash
Jacques Chaban-Delmas
Marc Chagall
Charlie Chaplin
Harry Chaplin
Tony Chapman
Ray Charles
Dave Chaston
Bill Chenail
Marshall Chess
Jesus Christ
Michael Chung
Mikey Chung
Eric Clapton
Sanford Clark
Dave Clark
Stanley Clarke
Alan Clayton
Jimmy Cliff
Bill Clinton
Eddie Cochran
Michael Cohl
Ken Colyer
Eddie Condon
Peter Cook
Sam Cooke
Michael Cooper
Billy Cotton
David Courts
Floyd Cramer
Steve Crotty
Jack Daniel
Sarah Dash
Gary Davis
Miles Davis
Spencer Davis
George V Deborah
Alain Delon
Jim Dickinson
Old Dimashio
Jim Dine
Walt Disney
Willie Dixon
Deborah Dixon
Bernard Doherty
Charley Drayton
Heather Drive
Alan Dunn
Gus Dupree
Theodore Augustus Dupree
Jack Dyer
Bob Dylan
Eric Easton
Billy Eckstine
Sir Edward
Duke Ellington
Jack Elliott
Brian Eno
Brian Epstein
Ahmet Ertegun
Don Everly
Douglas Fairbanks
Judge Fairley
Adam Faith
Ricky Fataar
Ricky Fenson
Shane Fenton
Lisa Fischer
Mark Fisher
Scott Fitzgerald
Will Fly
Jane Fonda
Patricia Ford
Bernard Fowler
James Fox
Rob Fraboni
Robert Frank
Robert Fraser
Maureen Fremantle
Sir Galahad
Paul Getty
Dave Gibbs
Christopher Gibbs
Allen Ginsberg
Jimmy Giuffre
Bill Gober
Dave Golding
Bobby Goldsboro
Roberta Goldstein
Jimmy Gordon
Peggy Sue Got
Bill Graham
Eddy Grant
Jerome Green
Richard Green
Al Green
Robert Greenfield
Edith Grove
Johnny Gunnell
Rick Hall
Jerry Hall
Pat Hare
Catherine Harle
George Harrison
Hugh Hart
Dick Hattrel
Dick Hattrell
Roger Hawkins
Richard Heller
Hugh Hefner
Jimi Hendrix
Holly Hill
Justin Hinds
Mason Hoffenberg
John Lee Hooker
Barney Hoskyns
Sam Houston
Bobby Howes
Sandra Hull
John Humphrys
Eric Idle
Michael Jackson
Al Jackson
David Jacobs
Walter Jacobs
Chris Jagger
Brenda Jagger
Mick Jagger
Tommy James
Bobby Jameson
Dominic Jennings
Brian Jobson
Andy Johns
Jimmy Johnson
Johnnie Johnson
Robert Johnson
Brian Jones
Darryl Jones
George Jones
Joe Jones
Tom Jones
Dave Jordan
Steve Jordan
James Karnbach
Linda Keith
Alan Keith
Jim Keltner
Nick Kent
Ken Kesey
Tom Keylock
Bobby Keys
Chris Kimsey
Albert King
Brad Klein
Allen Klein
Sheila Klein
Brian Knight
Alexis Korner
Bob Kowalski
Billy J Kramer
Lord Lampson
Rainer Langhans
Andrew Law
Chuck Leavell
Jerry Lee
Byron Lee
John Lee
Richard Leher
Jerry Leiber
Annie Leibovitz
John Lennon
Jay Leno
David Letterman
Jacob Levy
Jerry Lee Lewis
Edward Lewis
John Leyton
Michael Lindsay-Hogg
Carlo Little
David Litvinoff
Rupert Loewenstein
Alan Lomax
Andrew Loog
Michael Lydon
George MacDonald
Andrea Maffessanti
Gerard Malanga
Judith Malina
Harvey Mandel
Anna Marie
Bob Marley
Christian Marquand
Dean Martin
George Martin
Perry Mason
Stephen Maturin
Joe B Mauldin
John Mayall
Paul McCartney
Fred McDowell
Earl McGrath
Walt McGuire
Ian McLagan
Mary Beth Medley
Tony Meehan
George Michael
Jean Michard-Pellissier
John Michell
Jimmy Miller
Heather Mills
John Mills
Barry Mindel
Willie Mitchell
Lee Mohamed
Kari Ann Moller
Marilyn Monroe
Henry Morgan
Kate Moss
Matt Murphy
Bill Murray
Louis Myers
Dave Natale
David Navarrete
Ricky Nelson
Willie Nelson
Aaron Neville
Andy Newmark
Jack Nitzsche
Don Nix
Claude Nobs
Patrick O'Brian
Andy Oldham
Andrew Oldham
Laurence Olivier
Roy Orbison
Jane Ormsby-Gore
Shirley Owens
Jimmy Page
Peter Pakvis
Anita Pallenberg
Lou Pallo
Mark Palmer
Peter Parcher
Charlie Parker
Tom Parker
Gretchen Parsons
John Paul
Les Paul
Harold Pendleton
Don Peake
Richard Penniman
Bill Perks
Wayne Perkins
Bill Perks
James Phelge
Earl Phillips
John Phillips
Michelle Phillips
Sam Phillips
Wilson Pickett
Michael Pietsch
Harold Pinter
Gene Pitney
Edgar Allan Poe
Linda Poitier
Suki Poitier
Roman Polanski
Paul Pond
George Porter
Cole Porter
John Porter
Raj Prem
Elvis Presley
Billy Preston
Jim Price
Lee Radziwill
Michael Rainey
Bonnie Raitt
Ronald Reagan
George Recile
Sue Records
Jimmy Reed
Lou Reed
William Rees-Mogg
Alain Resnais
Johnny Restivo
King Richard
Angela Richards
Bert Richards
Bill Richards
Ernie Richards
Keith Richards
Lord Richards
Larry Rivers
Lisa Robinson
Alan Rogan
Jimmy Rogers
Max Romeo
Linda Ronstadt
Jane Rose
Tim Rose
Michael Ross
Johnny Rotten
Dick Rowe
Arthur Rubinstein
Peter Rudge
Leon Russell
Tony Russell
Tony Sanchez
Tom Sawyer
Mario Schifano
David Schneiderman
Kevin Schroeder
Gary Schultz
Martin Scorsese
George C Scott
Ronnie Scott
Joe Seabrook
Peter Sellers
Larry Sessler
Simon Sessler
Will Shade
Helen Shapiro
June Shelley
Bobby Sherman
Brooke Shields
Wayne Shorter
John Silver
Shel Silverstein
Frank Sinatra
Ernie Smatt
Cathy Smith
Don Smith
Joyce Smyth
Joe Sorena
Terry Southern
Phil Spector
Ronnie Spector
Maurice Spira
Tommy Steele
Rod Stewart
Ian Stewart
Robert Stigwood
Holly Story
Ed Sullivan
Hubert Sumlin
Leon Sundeep
Donald Sutherland
Gypsy Tart
Mick Taylor
Johnnie Taylor
Vince Taylor
Dick Taylor
Mick Taylor
Antonio Teen
William Tell
Stephen Tennant
Sonny Terry
Winston Thomas
Walter Thompson
Frank Thorogood
Ricky Tick
Keith Time
Nick Tosches
Margaret Trudeau
Pierre Trudeau
Betsy Uhrig
Roger Vadim
Sarah Vaughan
Bobby Vee
Ed Victor
Tom Waits
James Walker
Joe Walsh
Andy Warhol
Don Was
Charlie Watts
Nigel Waymouth
Willie Weeks
Dennis Wells
Jerry Wexler
Jack White
Vicki Wickham
Bill Wild
Richard Williams
Robin Williams
Hank Williams
Bruce Willis
Bill Willis
Brian Wilson
Peter Wolf
Bobby Womack
Ron Wood
Patrick Woodroffe
Bernie Worrell
Bill Wyman
Frank Wynne
Stephen Yarde
Walter Yetnikoff
Bill Zysblat

Just Friends: The Social Network of Patti Smith

In research on social networks one often finds a bias towards the study of "star networks", as exemplified by the fixation with the Kevin Bacon number, or the study of "nerd networks", as exemplified by the fixation with the Paul Erdos number. The former work seems to stem from the availability of movie databases such as IMDB, while the latter stems from the availability of scientific literature citation databases made available by Google Scholar and others. Which brings up the issue of where can one find the social networks associated with artists, authors, musicians, and other cultural figures. It appears to me that Wikipedia is not rich enough (yet) to support queries into the wide social and intellectual influences of important artists.

This idea came to me as I read the book Just Kids by Patti Smith. Smith's book is a memoir about her years living with Robert Mapplethorpe in New York City, and it is filled with references to her friends and artistic influences - she is a 'name dropper' in the best sense of the term. I wrote a short script that extracted all the names of people that she referenced in her book. I will post them here, and encourage others to help build a data set that can, hopefully, be used in the future to trace the social and artistic influences of important artists like Patti Smith.

Social Network of Patti Smith (from Just Kids by Patti Smith, 2010, Harper Collins)

Peter Allen
Stanley Amos
Eric Andersen
Diane Arbus
Albert Ayler
Charles Aznavour
Josephine Baker
Hank Ballard
Stanley Bard
Syd Barrett
Samuel Beckett
Pierre Bergé
Ted Berrigann
Peggy Biderman
William Blake
Susan Bottomly
Jim Brady
Joe Brainard
Ray Bremser
Andy Brown
Oscar Brown
James Brown
Tim Buckley

Robert Burns
William Burroughs
Paul Butterfield
Arthur C. Clarke
John Cale
Julia Margaret Cameron
Donald Cammel
Art Carney
Lewis Carroll
Jim Carroll
Johnny Carson
Ben Casey
Leo Castelli
John Chamberlain
Shirley Clarke
Roberto Clemente
Charles Cole
John Coltrane
Gary Cooper
Joseph Cornell
Gregory Corso
Albert Cossery
Lee Crabtree

Robert Creeley
David Croland
Edward Curtis
Sandy Daley
Joe Dallesandro
Lynn Davis
Miles Davis
Dorothy Dean
Jay Dee Daugherty
Sharon Delano
Louis Delsarte
Eric Dolphy
Marcel Ducham
Bob Dylan
Penny Each
Thomas Eakins
Isabelle Eberhardt
Jonathan Eisen
Bill Elliott
William Faulkner
Andrea Feldman
Danny Field
Frances Finley

Bobby Fischer
Jim Fisk
Scott Fitzgerald
Ernest Flagg
Dan Flavin
Dennis Florio
Anne Frank
Sam Friedman
Jane Friedman
John Garfield
Judy Garland
Marvin Gaye
Henry Geldzahler
Jean Genet
Allen Ginsberg
John Giorno
Tony Glover
Danny Goldberg
Edward Gorey
John Graham
Maureen Gray
Emmett Grog
Sally Grossman
Peggy Guggenheim
Daniel Halpern
Janet Hamill
Mike Hammer
Ed Hansen
Tim Hardin
Howard Hawk
Patty Hearst
Richard Hell
David Hemming

Jimi Hendrix
Charles Henri Ford
Audrey Hepburn
Hans Hoffman
Billie Holiday
Edward Hopper
Lorraine Hotel
Fred Hughes
Victor Hugo
Tony Ingrassi
Jimmy Iovine
Mick Jagger
Henry James
Jesse James
Country Joe

Robert John
Brian Jones
Jennifer Jones
Janis Joplin
James Joyce
Anna Karina
Anna Kavan
Lenny Kaye
Margaret Kennedy
Clark Kent
Jack Kerouac
Scott King
George Kleinsinger
Ruth Kligman

Willem de Kooning
Lee Krasner
Kris Kristofferson
Sidney Lanier
Allen Lanier
Timothy Leary
William Lee
John Lennon
Lotte Lenya
Betsy Lerner
Richard Lester

Judy Linn
Richard Lloyd
Lance Loud
Charles Ludlam
Martin Luther
Donald Lyons
Mary Magdalene
Anna Magnani
Gerard Malanga
George Mandel
Charles Manson
Michael Mapplethorpe
Edward Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe
Dave Marsh
Bernadette Mayer
Bobby McGee
Roger McGuinn
John McKendry
Willie McTell
Richard Meltzer
Howard Michael

Nancy Milford

Robert Miller
Sal Mineo
Keith Moon
Jeanne Moreau
Jim Morrison
Van Morrison
Paul Muni
Billy Name

Nancy M. Rooney
Bob Neuwirth
Kim Novak
Phil Ochs
Peter Orlovsky
Frank O’Hara
Eugene O’Neill
Anita Pallenberg
Harvey Park
Charlie Patton
Steve Paul
Tom Paxton
Sandy Pearlman
Gregory Peck
Irving Penn

Elsa Peretti
Tony Perkins
Pablo Picasso
James Place
George Plimpton
Diane Podlewski

Michael Pollard
Jackson Pollock

Larry Poons
Richard Poussette-Dart
Annie Powell
Ann Powell
Charlie Pride
Mary Quant

Robert Querelle
George Raft
Jerome Ragni
Oliver Ray
Lou Reed
Peter Reich
Matthew Reich
Paul Revere
Rene Ricard
Keith Richard
Jonathan Richman
Arthur Rimbaud
Lisa Rinzler
Larry River
Lisa Robinson

Nicolas Roeg
Mickey Rooney
Nancy M. Rooney
Gypsy Rose Lee
Raymond Roussel
Bruce Rudow
Todd Rundgren
Mickey Ruski
Albert Ryder
Paul Schrader
Albert Schweitzer
Steven Sebring
Edie Sedgwick
Sam Shepard
Frank Sinatra
Grace Slick
Adam Smith
Fred Sonic Smith
Linda Smith
Jack Smith
Jesse Paris Smith
Harry Smith
Richard Sohl
Valerie Solanas
Holly Solomon
Susan Sontag
Terry Southern
Phil Spector
Mickey Spillane
Bruce Springsteen
Robert Louis Stevenson
Ellen Stewart
Alfred Stieglitz
Paul Strand
Billy Swan
Sharon Tate
Elizabeth Taylor
Dylan Thomas
Nick Tosches
Spencer Tracy
Alexander Trocchi
John Vaccaro
Roger Vadim
Rudy Vallée
Tom Verlaine
Paul Verlaine
Jean Vigo
Sam Wagstaff
Jones Wagstaff
Anne Waldman
Andy Warhol
Jimmy Washington
Patty Water
Kurt Weill
Samuel Weiser
Andrea Whips
Walt Whitman
Oscar Wilde
Paul William
Hank William
Colin Wilson
Johnny Winter
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Wolfe
Holly Woodlaw
Andrew Wylie
Neil Young
Lloyd Ziff

Hashtag Hijacking and Other Twitter Trash

On Monday June 14, 2010 at the Hilton New York there was a one-day conference on the business opportunities related to the use of the popular social-media application Twitter. The organizers of the conference set up a twitter account and published a hashtag #TWTRCON to encourage realtime collaboration and discussion about the conference topics. The conference had a large-screen projection of the live stream of twitter messages that contained the hashtag. At about 12PM, NASA public affairs specialist Stephanie Schierholz took to the stage to discuss her organization's use of social media. As the presentation began, a stream of messages using the #TWTRCON hashtag were displayed with content unrelated to the conference topics. Within minutes the stream contained hundreds of message-tweets protesting NASA's primate experiments. These messages were posted to Twitter by a coalition of animal rights defenders, and seriously damaged the utility of the hashtag and the associated channel to both conference attendees and those interested users following at a distance.

The problem of hashtag hijacking was first reported in mid-2009 as unrelated promotional messages (for example, from HabitatUK) were using trending topics and hashtags associated with the news on the presidential elections in Iran. In recent national events (e.g., the Bonnaroo Music Festival, June 10-14) and international events (such as the 2010 FIFA WORLD CUP June and July 2010), we have noted substantial problems with hashtag hijacking (e.g., 20% of all messages in the case of #Bonnaroo).

A more subtle problem exists in the unwanted commercial messages increasingly appearing in the feeds of people who are widely respected and influential broadcasters. Consider the case of Tim O'Reilly who is an influential Twitter user, broadcasting daily messages on topics related to computing technologies. O'Reilly is CEO of a media company, and his knowledge and insights have built a following of nearly 1.5 million users. However, his feed contains a significant fraction of commercial messages related to his media company, often advertising "DEAL OF THE DAY" and including coupon codes. In addition, online advertising companies (e.g., Ad.ly) are actively recruiting influential users of Twitter, such as O'Reilly, to insert commercial messages into their feeds.

For many users this increasing use of twitter as a platform for commercial, unwanted messages significantly impairs the social media experience. The examples of Twitter trash above indicate that social media users need new tools to keep their feeds free of unwanted and unneeded messages.

Pics and Images and Memory