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 thought it was about time he owned up and stepped out of that closed shell. I knew he went through bad periods, even if he didn't want to write about it. I used to wrestle with that too. As a writer, you don't want to bore people with your own story. But you eventually realize that you're not the only one who is lonely or having problems.
Good music comes out of people playing together, knowing what they want to do and going for it. You have to sweat over it and bug it to death. You can't do it by pushing buttons and watching a TV screen.
I've never had inner turmoil about all this. You find a lot of people these days who cannot stand to be alone. You could lock me up in solitary for weeks on end, and I'd keep myself amused.
Most guys I know are assholes. I have some great asshole friends, but that's not the point. Friendship has got nothing to do with that. It's 'can you hang, can you talk about this without any feeling of distance between you?' Friendship is the diminishing of distance between people. That's what friendship is, and to me it's one of the most important things in the world.
You get onstage and make other people feel happy. Make them feel good.
I read the Bible sometimes, but it bores me to death. I just want to know what other people find so bloody fascinating.
Some people think I'm a mythical genius, others think I'm a junkie madman.
But I'm not here just to make records and money. I'm here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: "Do you know this feeling?
You're sitting with some guys, and you're playing and you go, "Ooh, yeah!" That feeling is worth more than anything. There's a certain moment when you realize that you've actually just left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you. You're elevated because you're with a bunch of guys that want to do the same thing as you. And when it works, baby, you've got wings. You know you've been somewhere most people will never get; you've been to a special place.
You get too close to it. You have to wait for the reaction,
I've never tried to achieve anything. I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records.
Songwriting's a weird game. I never intended to become one - I fell into this by mistake, and I can't get out of it. It fascinates me. I like to point out the rawer points of life.
Give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string; I wouldn't get bored anywhere.
There's a young man on my team that got 23 rebounds tonight, and that's probably a big reason (for the win). It got to be where we shoot it, miss it, and Paul will get it back.