The Animated Guide to Marc Maron’s ‘Nicotine Diaries,’ Year 10

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.

- from WTF #639, 2015

Go to: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

Week 10 | Year 10

Animations by Kyle Strope.

The Animated Guide to Marc Maron’s ‘Nicotine Diaries,’ […]