Keith Richards
Keith Richards
Keith Richardsis an English guitarist, singer, songwriter, best-selling memoirist, and founding member of the rock band The Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone Magazine credited Richards for "rock's greatest single body of riffs" on guitar and ranked him 4th on its list of 100 best guitarists. Fourteen songs that Richards wrote with the Rolling Stones' lead vocalist Mick Jagger are listed among Rolling Stone magazine's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The Stones are generally known for their guitar interplay of rhythm...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionGuitarist
Date of Birth18 December 1943
CityDartford, England
When you're 20, you can't imagine being 30. When you're 30, you can't imagine being 40. When you're 40, you can't imagine being 100.
We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain.
I'd been an expert at taking beatings. Then I had a lucky break where I did a bully in, by total sheer luck. ... One minute I was the mark, and with just one swift move, I put the big man in school down. ... Once he was down, the whole atmosphere in the schoolyard changed. A huge cloud seemed to be lifted from me. ... I'd never been aware the cloud was so large.
A painter's got a canvas. The writer's got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence.
I was in awe sometimes listening to Mick Taylor . Everything was there in his playing - the melodic touch, a beautiful sustain and a way of reading a song.
The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years: observing people, how they react to one another, which in a way makes you weirdly distant. ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer.
The rock's easy, but the roll is another thing...
But I've always felt very comfortable on stage, even if I screw up. It always felt like a dog, this is my turf, piss around it. While I'm here, nothing else can happen. All I can do is screw up. Otherwise, have a good time.
I only get ill when I give up drugs
And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You've got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.
I never sleep alone. If there is no one to sleep next to, I'll sleep next to a stuffed animal. It makes me feel secure and safe. It's a little embarrassing to admit it; I'm an old man now. It's important to me though.
I don't wave a flag for anything. I'm a musician.
The public library is the great equaliser.
I've got nothing against daylight. I don't live totally nocturnally. Only when I feel like it. Which is most of the time.