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
I've always been suspicious of TV, I've always found music and video to be an unhappy marriage.
Hey, we just enjoy it. I think we think we're getting the hang of this thing, you know?
... I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand ... you've got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different ... the X-factor - so important in rock and roll - which is the feel..
Retire? I can't spell the word. I'd play in a wheelchair.
It's good to be anywhere.
When I listen to what I did under the influence - 10 years of work - I don't think it either enhanced or impaired me. It didn't have that much to do with it.
The idea of retiring is like killing yourself. It's almost like Hari Kari. I intend to live to a 100 and go down in history.
Everybody's got a different way of telling a story - and has different stories to tell.
You didn't know whether Chuck Berry was black or white - it was not a concern.
I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again.
I can sustain the impetus over the long tours we do is by feeding off the energy that we get back from an audience. That's my fuel. All i've got is this burning energy, especially when i've got a guitar in my hands.
What interested me about Chuck Berry was the way he could step out of the rhythm part with such ease, throwing in a nice, simple riff, and then drop straight into the feel of it again. We used to play a lot more rhythm stuff. We'd do away with the differences between lead and rhythm guitar. You can't go into a shop and ask for a "lead guitar". You're a guitar player, and you play a guitar.
Preaching is tax free. Very little to do with God, a lot to do with money
Treat each guitar track-and each song-completely different. For example, if I'm using a certain amp and guitar on one track, I'll deliberately use something else for the next tune or overdub.