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
It made me sick - my name's Keith Richards. It hardly makes it against Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters, does it? On my first guitar I had Boy Blue written - just pathetic. But that was as good as I got at the time.
And it was a very, very fruitful and great relationship between the Stones and The Beatles. It was very, very friendly.
The only things Mick and I disagree about is the band, the music and what we do.
About myself I have no great illusions. I know what I am. I know what I'm good at. I know what I ain't. I'm always hoping to surprise myself. But I do have a love of music and I do love to communicate it, and that's the best I can do, really. And I can raise a good family, too.
George Jones is a national treasure and should be treated accordingly. A unique style so often emulated even inadvertently.
I occasionally borrow pot from my kids. They do a little weed occasionally. 'Here, Dad' — or more likely, 'Dad, have you got any?'
If you're cool, you don't know nothing about it. It just is, or you ain't.
If you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses because they're asleep.
One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats.
I don't encourage anybody to do what I do, you know? Why should you? More for me!
I thought rock and roll was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expression of rebellion. It used to be one channel you could take without ever havin' to kiss arse, you know?
I'm free of hypochondria-- although I've got everything else.
It's a privilege just to wake up to a new day.
If you're gonna get wasted, get wasted elegantly.