By GREG GIUFFRIDA
ASAP

The whole deal with Keith Richards snorting his dad? I've got his back on this one. Not that he needs it.

Now in his fifth decade as rock 'n' roll's most endangered ambassador, Keith expertly spins the greatest yarns of the genre and tosses out glib asides on his life well wasted.

As his legend stretches past his wildest days, the cold, hard truths of Keith's adventures -- chemical or otherwise -- matter less than the way they're told. And then retold a million times, whether by journalists, groupies, jilted lovers or the Stones themselves.

There's plenty of tales in Stones lore that Keith tells with a dash of hyperbole and a pinch of exaggeration over others' accounts: Seeing Muddy Waters painting the ceiling at Chess Studios in Chicago; being locked in a kitchen with Mick Jagger by their manager to write their first song; Charlie Watts' stiff punch to Jagger's face in Amsterdam in 1984.

The same embellishment gets applied by others to Keith's habits, sometimes eclipsing his distinctive guitar playing and status as one half, with Jagger, of one of the greatest songwriting teams in rock.

No period fostered Keith's ''elegantly wasted'' reputation better than the band's forced retreat to the south of France and recording of the classic 1972 album ''Exile On Main Street.'' Keith held court over a mountainside chateau replete with shady characters, car wrecks and fistfights fueled by booze, pills and powders.

In the end, while other players faded into obscurity or worse, Keith became rock's great survivor.

On stage in recent tours, Keith has taken to greeting the audience before his set with a cheerful, fatalistic catchphrase: ''It's great to be here ... it's great to be anywhere!''

I've met Keith twice, both times backstage before Stones shows in the last two years (as a guest and fan, not a journalist).

In friendly company, he is -- in honor of old-time jazz singer Hoagy Carmichael -- a card. He cracks jokes with fellow guitarist Ronnie Wood over the massive snooker table that joins them on the road.

When I first met him in Memphis in 2005, I extended my hand earnestly, petrified: ''Keith, I'm Greg.''

He shook my hand, with a serious face: ''You're Greg, and that's Elvis.'' He pointed to a cardboard cutout of the King in the corner, before letting out a raspy laugh and slapping me on the shoulder.

When we posed for a picture, he elbowed me away from my girlfriend and put his arm around her. ''I go next to the girl,'' he said, sort of joking; again straight-faced.

The Stones rarely find the need to apologize. Keith less so. Not for his well-documented heroin habit in the 1970s, nor his still-steady regimen of Marlboro Reds and Orange Crush soda mixed with vodka.

So feel free to believe he did snort a bit of his old man in a decadent display of affection.

But make sure there isn't a wink and a cackle as he walks out of the room.

Greg Giuffrida is night supervisor of the AP bureau in Nashville, Tenn. He spends his disposable income collecting Stones vinyl and openly declares a conflict of interest that keeps him from covering them objectively.