Keith Richards - Loaded magazine Nov. 95

let's talk about sex

[probablement Uncut, dont le journaliste fait partie]
Jon Wilde interviewer.

K: I was always thinking about chicks, but they were never the
motivating reason for playing rock and roll. Funnily enough it was
there for the guys to get off on. Then it just changed overnight. A
hit single and suddenly it was all 13 year old girls. Fucking
amazing! The week before, I couldn't get laid to save my life. Then
it turned 180 degrees and I'm having to fend them off. I wake up and
find that I'm a sex symbol, man.
But we didn't set out with that. It was more like a happy accident.
A nice little bonus, at least for a while. Then you realize that it's
getting insane and you have to learn to deal with it.
These chicks wouldn't have given me a second glance before. Now they're
throwing their knickers on stage with their telephone numbers on. All these
knickers coming at me. And I kept them all. I mean, it might seem
like every guy's fantasy, but it reaches a point where you have to
ask yourself: " are these the kind of chicks I want to hang with?"

Q: Legend has it that you were a late starter in the sex department?
K: Well, yeah. That might be true. But I actually find it very hard
to remember the actual first time. There were a couple of nice girls
at art school who showed me the way, but I'm not sure how far it
went.
I mean, I never got into a serious relationship until I was 20. Then
before I knew it I was on the road with the stones and there's chicks
all over the place wanting to get in my pants.
Well, I'm no bloody angel, know what I mean? So before I know it I'm
in bed with Ronnie Spector. That's when I found rock n' roll. That's
also when I learned about jealousy, cos I had Phil Spector chasing me
around with a shotgun. That's when I started ducking and diving. It
was a question of survival.

Q: What was your attitude to sex in the early days of the stones?
K: Well, it's always been the same really. It boils down to the fact
that I've never just been interested in a lay. If I'm going to be
with a woman, even if just for a day or two, then we've got to have a
laugh. And then, if we get around to screwing, that's wonderful.
But I've never started a relationship just for the purpose of
wham-bam-thankyou man. Chicks are too precious for that. I mean, I
love chicks. I love them too much to just roll over and stick it in.

Q: You were never interested in notches on the bed post?
K: Not at all. I could never understand the whole attitude with Bill.
You have to understand that he'd do it with anything and anybody. The
worst bags you could imagine. Anything.
I was only interested in real women. Not someone you dragged in, gave
her a quick one, kicked her out and chalked it up.
If I'm going to get into bed with someone, I gotta like 'em.
Otherwise, I'd rather go into a quiet corner and jerk off. My
attitude has always been that ladies are ladies and chicks are
chicks. They're not things to be chalked up on a score cards.

Q: How would you describe your attitude to groupies over the years?
K: Well, all I can say about the groupies of the 60s and 70s was
that there were some great girls. They weren't just interested in
Wham-Bam either. These chicks would look after you. You'd say, "I
don't feel so good today" and they'd come over and feed you. It
wasn't just fuck, fuck, fuck...well, sometimes it was. But other
times you needed to cool out and they were there for you.
But the whole groupie thing was different then. Even if you spent
the night with the most prolific girl, the most you'd get was a nasty
dose of Vietnamese Rose which could be sorted out with a couple of
barrels of antibiotics. Now it's a life and death thing. The stakes
are much higher.

Q: What kind of women always attracted you?
K: I never really had an ideal woman as such. I simply love the ones
who love me. I've never been the sort of guy who only likes blondes or
whatever. I like them all. I mean, chicks are endlessly fascinating to
me. They're always an education. I can have a load more fun with
chicks than with a bunch of guys. When men are left to there own
devices, they're always jousting, trying to put one over on each
other in a boring, macho way. But women have a different point of
view on things and they're not afraid to point out that I've been
behaving like an asshole. And I kinda like that.

Q: Would you describe yourself as a natural flirt?
K: Well, let's put it this way, when it comes to chicks, I like to
see a gleam in their eye. But it doesn't always have to be a sexual
thing. I can enjoy it just as much with Ronnie's mum or someone's
auntie. It doesn't always have to be some 6ft Playboy model. I know
plenty of them and they're lovely girls too. But it's as much fun to
sit down and have a laugh with Charlie's mum and say "Come here and
give us a kiss, darling".
See, I've discovered over the years that the feminine heart is very
warm. And guys have to learn to understand it. But a lot of guys,
they're so hung up on the idea of being male that they don't stop to
realize that you have to work at it to know what it's all about. Even
then, you don't really understand them. One of the things I like to
do, if I have the time, is listen to chicks talk. What are they
really on about? What are they saying about us? A lot of good songs
come out of that.

Q: There's the title track from the Some Girls album which concludes
that "Black girls just want to fuck all night"...
K: Well they do. At least in my experience. That's not all they want
to do. But if you can go all night, then they will to. I mean, Mick
wrote that line. and he was probably moaning because he couldn't keep
up with some chick he was seeing. So, in a way, it's a reverse joke.
But, y'know, some guys don't want to go all night. They're happy with
something a little quicker. As for myself, I'll keep going until I
run out of steam.
See, you have to understand that The Stones have always been a
horny bunch of bastards, and, once in a while, we'll write something
or do something that gets up people's noses. Like we got into trouble
over the posters for Black and Blue - with all these chicks tied up.
Well, I know a lot of chicks who like to be tied up. As long as it's
on a consensual basis, there's nothing much wrong with that. As far
as I'm concerned, a man and a woman can do anything they like
together, as long as they both agree.

Q: Have you ever used a song as a form of emotional revenge?
K: Oh yeah! There's a song on the Emotional Rescue album called All
About You. That's a particularly nasty song. It's like a litany of
insults. And it was written so I could get a few things off my chest.
The funny thing is that everyone assumes that it was written about
Anita (Pallenberg).
In fact, it's about Mick. I'd just come off junk and went back to
work with the Stones. In my absence Mick had been running the show. I
was ready to pick up where we left off. But in the meantime, Mick had
got used to being in charge...so, when I returned to the fold, I was
made to feel like an intruder. I got the impression that certain
people wished I was back on junk. Well, thank you very much , and
fuck you Jack!
So, you see, I had a lot of poison in my system and I had to get it
all out. But it's not all about Mick. That song is about a few other
things as well. And Anita is one of them. I was breaking up with her
around that time. I'd said, 'Look, if we clean up together, we'll
stay together'. Well, I cleaned myself up. But she didn't. And I
realized that I couldn't sleep with someone who had a needle beside
the bed. I was too fragile at that point. I loved her, but I had to
leave.

Q: Any perversions to declare?
K: Hey! Perversions are perversions. Don't knock 'em! And one man's
perversions are another man's...y'know? Whatever you can imagine,
there's someone there trying it. It all comes down to what turns you
on. Look at the Marquis de Sade. It comes down to the fact that some
one's got a problem. Loads of people have problems and they get
into some weird shit. You name it. Donkeys, sheep...it's not for me.
But, if I was a shepherd stuck up on the hills for a few months, a
sweet little lamb now and then might seem like an attractive
proposition. Let's face it. I'd like to think I could resist. It
would have to be a pretty cold winter for me to go for it. Then
again, who knows?

Q: But you draw the line at donkeys?
K: Well, not if the chick doesn't! Mind you, those donkeys don't half
pong. That's a major drawback. I met this chick in Cairo, she had a
special way with donkeys. She had no problem with it. Her conscience
was clear. The donkey didn't seem to mind. He didn't need much
encouragement, if you know what I mean!

Q: Any interesting fetishes that you'd like to share with our readers?
K: Oh, I do like the odd fetish. Lingerie is particularly nice to
look at. It's even nicer to take off. I can't say the same for my own
lingerie. But a chick's stuff - that's made to be taken off. It's
part of the courting dance. A wonderful dance it is too. There's
nothing more beautiful than a great-looking chick removing her
clothes. In fact, the only thing better is a great looking chick
removing mine.

Q: How important is sex?
K: A lot of guys take sex for granted. Arsenal 1 Newcastle Utd 4. So
fucking what, y' know?
But it's never been like that for me. It's important. 'Course it's
important. But it's always been the other things about women that
have meant a lot to me. They take care of you afterwards. You screw
them all night and they bring you breakfast in the morning. A nice
bit of toast. Whatever. It's the bits before and after that I find
particularly touching. The sex itself - it's not everything. I mean,
my dogs do it all the time. If that's all there is to it, you might
as well run into the street and find a lamp-post with a hole in it.


Q: How drastically did heroin affect you're sex life?
K: Well, it complicated things. That's for sure. Heroin made my life
difficult in a lot of ways. It's an incredible high. But when you
reach that high, the question is: what are you going to do with it?
Because what you have to do is get more out of it. And you end up
thinking like a criminal, even though you ain't. As far as I'm
concerned, it was an experiment that went on too long.

If you're asking me about sex...well, it's very hard to remember when
you're on heroin. Put it this way: it's not what you'd call an
aphrodisiac. With heroin, everything else goes on the back-burner,
and that includes sex. You have to remember that being a junkie is a
boring way of life. You don't wake up in the morning, look in the
mirror and start singing 'Oh What a Beautiful Morning'.

Q: You once remarked that the most important things in life were rock
n' roll and screwing. Do you still stand by that?
K: There's other things that are important. Like air, water and food.
but rock n' roll and screwing are easily the most enjoyable.

Q: In which order of preference?
K: Christ! That's a difficult one. Preferably both at once. I've had
some great ideas for songs when I've been screwing.
But, like I say, it's not just the screwing. I mean. that's a big part
of it. But it's more to do with the differences between men and women.
I've always found that area fascinating. It comes from growing up with
loads of women around me. Six aunts and the rest of it. I came to accept
the differences between men and women. After all, it's the differences
that make it interesting.
That for me is the great fascination about life: the mystery that lies
between man and woman. when you put it on a DNA card, there's only
a tiny difference. One little gene, that's all it is. But it's that
one little gene that makes it all work. All those differences...I've
never been afraid to celebrate those in certain songs - often with a
certain sense of humor.

Q: How would you summarize your feelings for women over the years?
K: Well, if I look back, I'm kinda happy about the fact that I never
needed to be pushy when it came to chicks. I was in the kind of
position where I could walk into a room and basically have my pick.
It's a hell of a lot easier to get laid if you're famous. But that
always seemed like a cheap shot to me. Far too easy. No appeal.

I just never had the attitude that a lot of guys have. I mean, a lot
of guys will just fuck anything, y'know? Just because it's there.
And these same guys...they never seem to learn anything about women.
Y'know, they'd be hard pushed to tell you where the clitoris is. Now
if a guy doesn't know where that is situated, then he's got a big
problem cos he ain't gonna satisfy any woman.
All I know is that I can't help guys like that. I'm not a doctor or a
gynecologist. All I know is that the chicks come back to me and say
'He was an asshole. He didn't have a clue' and I lend them my shoulder
to cry on. Now that's all I'm prepared to do. I'm not going to spend my
time drawing maps for guys who haven't learned to find their way around.
All I can say is that I haven't had any complaints. I never left a
woman feeling pissed off. I never had any woman chase me and tell me
that I'd let her down.
There's an art to that and it's an art that has to be learned.

Q: And finally Esther [or Dr. Ruth], a few words on a subject
particularly dear to our hearts. We're talking about bashing the
bishop, spanking the monkey, striking the old pink match...
K: Wanking, you mean? Nothing wrong with wanking, is there? I mean,
if a guy can't get hold of a chick, what's he supposed to do? I'll tell
you something for nothing...there's plenty of wankers in The Rolling
Stones.

Q: So we can safely conclude that Keith Richards likes a quick one off
the wrist as much as the next man?
K: Are you kidding? I'm a fucking expert when it comes to wanking.
Bloody hell. Quick ones. Slow ones. In-between ones. I've cut down a
bit recently, but I've done more than my fair share of wanking over
the years. If you're on the road and there ain't nothing left in the
bar, then you're going to seek refuge in Mother Fist and her Five
Daughters. Back to the room for a good wank. It's a lot less trouble
and there's more room in the bed.

Q: Even allowing for the donkey?
K: The donkey, the guide dog, the old march hare. I'm not fussy...
Jesus! I can't wait for this article to come out. Send me one, will you?

Keith Richards Guitar World vers 1995

Keith Richards is going to be a grandfather.

The blessed event should come later this spring, when the wife of his oldest child, Marlon, gives birth to the latest member of the Richards clan. Somehow, the notion of Keith, he of the skull-shaped ring, the wicked smile and the omnipresent bottle of Jack Daniels, as "Grandpa" is, well, odd.
"I'm joining the crowd,'' says the 52-year-old guitarist, alluding to others who have already entered the grizzled ranks of rock star grandparents--including good buddies Ringo Starr and Bob Dylan.
"I'm designing my little grandpa suit," cackles Richards. "I'll get a bag of candy in the pocket and grow a moustache or something.''
Grant Richards his good humor. He hasn't exactly called to chat about progeny, but about the Rolling Stones' bouncing new album, "Stripped." Unlike the band's last five releases, it's a live album, recorded during the European and Japanese legs of their "Voodoo Lounge" tour.
"Stripped" (Virgin) showcases the Stones playing in small clubs and even smaller rehearsal halls, though it does include its share of arena style rock--check out their anthemic, singalong version of Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone.'' For the most part, the album represents the Stones' entry into the widespread acoustic fray though, characteristically, on their own terms--not under the aegis of MTV Unplugged. The band that recorded "Country Home," "No Expectations" and "As Tears Go By" can do their own acoustic album, thank you.
"We had to do quite a lot of rehearsal to do the numbers for the theaters and clubs," Mick Jagger explains. "For those shows, we wanted a different kind of feel, a much more intimate feel. We were looking for different songs that would fit in with a different attitude.
"Doing the small shows was fun," Jagger adds. "It wasn't just for the record, you know? It gave a good vibe to the tour."
Not that "Stripped" isn't influenced by MTV's enormously popular series. Much of the album features bare-bones arrangements of familiar material--hits--including "Angie'' and a particularly searing "Street Fighting Man." Also included, however, are the kind of obscurities usually found in a box set, like the rarely heard "I'm Free,'' "The Spider And The Fly'' and "Shine A Light."
"Stripped" reminds us that the Stones are far more than the stadium rock juggernaut we've known for the past two decades. It's an important lesson. As songs like "Wild Horses" and "No Expectations" attest, the acoustic guitar has been an important part of the Stones' sound practically since their inception, and a necessary tool for conveying the country and blues roots of even their most explosive rock and roll.

GUITAR WORLD: "Stripped" is clearly a different kind of live album for the Stones. Was that the intention from the beginning?
KEITH RICHARDS: At the beginning of the tour, we realized that if we didn't watch out, we'd end up with "Voodoo Lounge Live At The Stadium." Both the band and Virgin said, "Nah, enough already." O.K., so now I've got a negative directive; I know what we don't want. But what do we want?
The germ of the idea came from rehearsals for the tour. We were rehearsing for six weeks, doing five or six, maybe 10 to 12 hours a day in there, listening to playbacks every night, just to check the sound and do the usual night watchman bit. They started to sound good. The tracks had a certain different feel--the guys think they're not recording, they're working and playing and having fun. So that's where the germ of the idea started.
GW: What made the spirit of the playing so different?
RICHARDS: Size. Most of these tracks--all but three--were done in a little room, with the whole band thrown in, no overdubs. You're live, but there's no audience. You catch the guys unaware--that's the kind of feel on it. You get a chance to play some of the old songs again, maybe put in a few licks you wish you'd put in the first time. [laughs]
GW: Like what?
RICHARDS: The original of "Street Fighting Man" is all-acoustic. Ever since then, for nearly 30 years, we've been playing it electric on stage. To be able to play that acoustically again, in its original instrumentation, that's a turn-on. I never thought I'd do that again.
GW: Ron Wood is an accomplished acoustic player, with a real acoustic soul. How much of a factor was that in deciding to do this kind of album?
RICHARDS: We're all like that. If Ronnie and I jam on the road, it's in a hotel room with two acoustic guitars. The Stones have always been that way, especially in the early days. We were a heavily acoustic band. All the songs on this album were all-acoustic in the first place. And there's plenty more. So there's no real difference for us. We're as accustomed to playing acoustic as we are electric. It's just fun to get it on tape, finally.
GW: How do you decide what songs to include on the album?
RICHARDS: You don't. You do them all and then decide what you're gonna leave off. That's when you go to the surgery and start cutting. It's better than not having enough. We had 30 or 40 songs, something like that.
We did a lot of arguing. That's a process I'd love to film with a little spy camera--the Stones sitting around a room, arguing. There's Mick in there trying to be democratic: "Put your hand up for this song, your hand up for that song." I sit in the back putting all my hands up for everything [laughs], trusting that the album will find itself in its own way. For all the lists of tunes I've ever drawn up, I don't think any albums have actually come out that way. You finish and then the record company calls and says, "Oh, we want two more tracks." Good-bye list.
GW: Did you refer much to the original versions of the songs?
RICHARDS: Just to pick up the lyrics or the odd chord change. We didn't study them or anything like that. It's 25, 30 years later; you're not going to play it the same. You wouldn't want to. But you wouldn't want to do it that differently, either. You want to remember, "What was I going for when I did it the first time?" and then do it a little more grown-up this time.
GW: The Rolling Stones, grown-up?
RICHARDS: Yeah. [laughs] The beat's more relaxed, more fluid, I think. I don't think anything's lost its edge. There's just a little more depth to everything. Mick is singing better than ever, the best I've heard him. And I've got to say, Darryl Jones--hey, this guy makes a big difference, too. You change the bass player, you're changing your engine room. But the way Darryl and Charlie hooked up from the beginning, that was a joy to me. That was a potential make-me-nervous situation; finding the right guy was all-important. Mr. Jones sounds better than I'd hoped for.
GW: The "Stripped" version of "Love In Vain," not surprisingly, brought to mind the version on "Let It Bleed." How did you develop that arrangement, which differs tremendously from the Robert Johnson original?
RICHARDS: Sometimes things just happen. We were sitting in the studio, saying, "Let's do `Love In Vain' by Robert Johnson." Then I'm trying to figure out some nuances and chords, and I start to play it in a totally different fashion. Everybody joins in and goes, "Yeah," and suddenly you've got your own stamp on it. I certainly wasn't going to be able to top Robert Johnson's guitar playing.
GW: The Stones have always done a lot of covers, but did "Love in Vain" feel a little more "holy" than others?
RICHARDS: All music is holy, you know? You can have profane versions of things. So as far as I'm concerned, you can either have a good version of a piece of music or a bad one. It doesn't matter if you change or expand it. I think if Johnson heard ours, he wouldn't turn his nose up. I think he'd prefer to be alive, too. [laughs]
GW: Much of "Stripped" has a distinctly country flavor. Who are your primary influences in that genre?
RICHARDS: [Country rock pioneer] Gram Parsons and many other guys you can pull out. Ian Stewart, too. They still join the band when we're playing, in one form or another. You carry little shades of them with you. I've listened to it since I was growing up, along with jazz and classical. It was the BBC and that was it. My mother was very musically inclined.. I grew up listening to really good music, a lot of it too sophisticated for a kid, like Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie. At the same time, we had George Jones, Ernest Tubb, Jimmie Rodgers, Hank Williams; I grew up with them as well.
So to me, country music comes quite naturally--after all, those melodies basically originate in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland. The playing is not very difficult, it's just that the studs and rhinestones are hard to find in England! [laughs]
GW: So what is the state of the Stones these days?
RICHARDS: It's never been better, really. That's the medical bulletin today. I've never seen Charlie Watts so happy on the road; he's a happy guy, normally, but the road can get to anybody. He's brought his old lady with him more, and I think he's enjoying playing with Darryl, playing with the Stones. I think part of that comes from taking his own thing around, the jazz band. He took it around the world, and he learned a lot, found a lot more enjoyment and possibilities of playing.
And Mick is extremely charming these days, even to me. We're getting along great. The band just feels good about itself, which is why we're going back on the road.
GW: Is it possible that you guys just appreciate what the Stones are more than you have in the past?
RICHARDS: The Stones always have to look for the Stones in themselves. We're still going. People's idea of the Stones changes from when they first heard them; there's myriad ideas and concepts of what the Stones are to listeners, just depending on how long they've known us. We're constantly going forward as well, always looking for the Stones in the same way. Sometimes you screw it up, but most times it gives us some encouragement that we'll find it again. It's very much a focused band, a lot of direction and energy. You can't ask for more than that.
GW: Because you really seem focused on the Stones now, does that effect whatever need you may feel for solo projects?
RICHARDS: Yeah, in a way. But I wonder where the Stones would be if I hadn't gone solo. I learned a lot of things--about being a front man, about how tight a band can be, has to be. Maybe the Stones are tighter because of that.
GW: Does it feel like old times, with the release of "Stripped" almost coinciding with "The Beatles Anthology"?
RICHARDS: It is funny, after all these years, the Beatles and Stones going head to head again. I saw George [Harrison] in London; he was in the middle of getting it together and he came to see a show. He was bemoaning the fact that he doesn't have his band. He said, "You lucky bastards!"
GW: So what's next for the Stones?
RICHARDS: We've got these dates in Asia and whatnot, and after that, I don't know. I guess everybody will kick back for a bit, mull it over. You see what you've got and what you feel like. All I want to do is make good records--I always have. I've been very fortunate to be able to get into the studio with some good bands and do that.

Keith Richards - Guitar Player avril 1983

Keith Richards
By Tom Wheeler
From Guitar Player, April 1983

Back in 1964 when Lennon and McCartney wanted to hold your hand, Jagger and Richards were walkin' the dog. Constantly compared to the Beatles and often to the Who, the Rolling Stones staked out their original turf with gritty music and a don't-mess-with-me stance. The Beatles disintegrated a dozen years ago, and the Who say they've unpacked their road cases for the last time. The Stones are in the studio, and they're not about to bid farewell to anyone.
Keith Richards stands in the eye of the hurricane. Around him swirls a rock and roll empire with 20 years history and mystery, success and excess, acclaim and controversy. He and his mates have been called many things by discerning critics and impassioned fans. One description recurs: The World's Greatest Rock And Roll Band.
In most respects the Stones have few peers, and in terms of sheer durability they have none, having somehow survived at or near the top of the rockpile for the last two-thirds of rock and roll's entire history. They've gone the distance and still pack a heavyweight punch: Their latest albums (Tattoo You and the live concert LP Still Life) are among their most vital works, and their most recent tour was astonishingly successful--four million fans applied for the New York tickets alone. (The recent film Let's Spend The Night Together documents the 1981-1982 tour of America and Europe.)
Some reasons for all this are apparent. First, Keith's confederates could hardly be more impressive: Mick Jagger, rock's most prominent singer; guitarist Ron Wood, already a star when he joined the group in 1975; plus a drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman, a powerhouse rhythm section revered the world over by fans and fellow musicians alike. Other strengths are equally obvious--the consistently fine Jagger/Richards compositions, the dynamic arrangements, the meticulous recording. Just as important is the way Keith Richards changes chords from G to C.
The band is built around a two-guitar sound, itself an extension of Richards' own uniqueness. He helped blur forever the line between lead and rhythm guitar, substituting a riffing technique in which melodic embellishments are grafted onto a vigorous rhythmic treatment of chords, partial chords, and low-register lines. He often employs a 5-string open tuning (with or without capo) that facilitates adding the melodic notes to a major chord--particularly the 4th, the 6th, and the 9th. Among many examples, "Brown Sugar" is a classic killer.
Keith's most obvious influence is Chuck Berry. The original "Carol" is a textbook of Berry's double-string licks and was covered on The Rolling Stones, the debut album. Keith has had a taste for Berry flavoring ever since. Perhaps his most highly stylized nod to the St. Louis rocker is his long solo in "Bitch," where Keith repeatedly turns the beat around, turns it inside out--weaving through the horns, sneaking up on the back-beat, making the style his own.
Chuck Berry adapted boogie-woogie piano techniques for the guitar's lower register, and this distinctive two-string rhythm pattern became another Stones staple. Richards made his mark on its development by sometimes slowing it down, piledriving the downbeat, and stoking up the tone to a grand raunch: a-ronk a-ronk a-ronk.
Richards' role in the group has been analyzed countless times. The consensus: Without Keith Richards there wouldn't be a Rolling Stones. Ron Wood explains, "In other bands they follow the drummer; the Stones follow Keith, and they always have." While some have even asserted that "Keith Richards is the Rolling Stones," the guitarist himself is the first to stress that any band member's indispensability is a two-way street: "The musicians are there to serve the band. All that matters is whether something furthers the overall sound."
This cardinal principle saturates over two dozen albums as well as the band's kinetic performance onstage. It spawned not only the musicians' unqualified commitment to the group sound, but also the band's distinctive mixing technique, in which the vocals--often loosely doubled rather than neatly harmonized--are nearly drowned in the storm of guitars, bass, and drums.
Keith's vision is rooted in a keen awareness of the power of the guitar--acoustic or electric--not only as a rhythm or solo instrument, but as a musical paintbrush capable of immense sonic canvases. He conceives a complex sound and knows how to get it. And yet to him a piece of music, like a real band, is a living, breathing creature existing apart from his conception of it. So while a particular project may be planned, Keith's sense of the music's own inherent magic keeps him flexible and spontaneous, adjusting as he goes.
On many contemporary recording sessions, musicians are put in compartments to minimize leakage (one instrument "leaking" into another's microphone), and the result is a compressed sound that fills every niche. Stones records are virtual opposites, roaring with heavy artillery but airy and spacious as well. While every sound counts, the spaces, the holes, are no less important. The band's raw materials may be the deceptively simple basics of rhythm and blues, but with the air crashing around like a cyclone, the effect is complex, even abstract. (The aural impressionism was once applied to a spoken introduction. The live concert LP Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out begins with two different announcements played back simultaneously at equal volume. The result is more than the sum of the parts--sort of a verbal metaphor for the Stones mix.)
Rough edges on doubled guitars may be as important as seamless overlaps. An "extra" guitar part--mixed far in the distance to work on subconscious levels--may be as essential as obvious elements. As co-producer (credited or uncredited) on virtually every record, Keith Richards has proved to be both a master of the bold stroke and a subtle colorist, evoking not only the thunder and lightning but also a sky to put it in. For the Rolling Stones, atmosphere is everything.
For many the sound and fury of the band is a transcendental experience. Although the musicians are gifted, the songs excellent, and the recordings finely tuned, the effect is not so much that of hearing sophisticated technicians processed through state-of-the-art technology. It's more like hearing the world's greatest garage band in the world's biggest garage.
Reflecting Richards' image as a menacing bad hombre, several of the band's classic tracks begin with the hint of danger or the clang of alarm--the drums of doom heralding the "Street Fighting Man," the haunted stirrings of "Gimme Shelter," or in "Sympathy For The Devil" voodoo percussion that charges the opening line with a dark intrigue: "Please allow me to introduce myself." Anyone who has heard these songs may not be surprised to learn that on December 18, 1943, when Keith Richards was born, the night sky over the hospital was filled with sirens and anti-aircraft gunfire.
At about the age of five Keith had a conversation with another tyke who lived on the same block in Dartford, 15 miles outside of London. He told Mick Jagger that he wanted to be like Roy Rogers and play guitar.
An only child, Keith hated the discipline of school, had frequent troubles with authorities, and considered a formal education generally irrelevant. In 1956, he heard his first Elvis Presley record and received his first guitar. He preferred to let his talents develop on their own, unencumbered by a teacher's interference. Shortly after enrolling in art school, he met up again with Mick Jagger. Sharing an affection for American bluesmen such as Jimmy Reed and Howlin' Wolf, the two teenagers began jamming.
Keith and Mick met blues fanatic and multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones, and together they formed the band that Brian named the Rolling Stones, after the title of a Muddy Waters song. Wyman had joined by the winter of 1962, Watts in early '63. Needing a manager, the group hired Andrew Oldham; Like Jagger and Richards he was 19. Decca records signed the band and a couple of months before the Beatles scored their first #1 hit, "She Loves You," the Rolling Stones released their first single, Chuck Berry's "Come On," which promptly disappeared.
After gradually building a British Following over the next year, the band recorded "Not Fade Away," a Buddy Holly hit that Keith had reworked from the ground up. While the original was a jerky hillbilly bopper, the Stones' version was dark and frantic, an early mark of the mannish boy. "Time Is On My Side," which made it to the American charts, was spiked with something rarely heard in the Top 10: electric blues guitar. Early evidence of the Stones' panoramic sound appeared in "It's All Over Now" (particularly in the fade-out), and again in the first Jagger/Richards composition which Keith was fully satisfied, "The Last Time."
The Stones continued to break new guitar ground. Their first #1 single, 1965's "Satisfaction," featured one of the catchiest guitar hooks of the decade (and helped popularize the fuzztone), while the following year's "19th Nervous Breakdown" kicked off with an early example of the melodic riffing technique. Hits followed in rapid succession. A year after 1967's Their Satanic Majesties' Request, a rare departure from the Stones' R&B roots, they returned with a vengeance to the territory previously carved out in "Under My Thumb" and "Let's Spend The Night Together." The new album was Beggars Banquet. As Barbara Charone wrote in Keith Richards: Life As A Rolling Stone [Doubleday/ Dolphin]: "If Beggars Banquet belonged to anyone, it was clearly a showcase for Richards' guitar virtuosity."
For Keith, 1968's "Jumpin' Jack Flash" marked a creative surge of still greater intensity. When Brian Jones' role diminished due to a long list of problems with drugs, the law, and fellow band members, Keith began to take over more and more of the musical duties. He was introduced to Gram Parsons, a member of the Byrds and later founder of the seminal country-rock group the Flying Burrito Brothers. Gram became a close friend and profoundly influenced the Stones by teaching Keith many country songs and a variety of guitar tunings.
Brian Jones had still another liability, a drug conviction that prevented him from touring. His contributions decreased steadily, and in the summer of 1969 he was fired. The replacement was a 20-year-old Mick Taylor, a veteran of John Mayall's bands and a highly skilled blues-rock soloist who brought a new dimension to the Stones. Taylor quit the band on friendly terms after recording on over half a dozen albums, and on December 19, 1975 he was replaced by Ron Wood, a veteran of Jeff Beck's group and the Small Faces. The Stones' lineup has remained intact since then.
It's been observed that the Rolling Stones have managed to fulfill anyone's fantasy of what rock stars should be, without sacrificing ragged edges. But Keith Richards' whole career hints that the raw spontaneity is the very lifeblood of the myth. One certainty--his sidekicks and tens of millions of fans owe much to the clarity of his purpose and his orchestrations of the apocalyptic garage sound. As Peter Goddard said in The Rolling Stones: The Last Tour [Beaufort Books]: "The Stones are famous because of Mick Jagger--they're a band because of Keith Richards."
What they call the world's greatest rock and roll band is a high-performance locomotive of unexcelled durability. Up in the engine, much of the machinery runs on Keith Richards' intuition. In the world outside, the Stones and their clan have long been portrayed as exaggerating rock and roll's every outrage onto some surreal plane. (Just one example: Ordinary rockers are denounced by the local pastor; one of Jagger's girlfriends was denounced by the Archbishop of Canterbury.) Keith Richards' life is especially well suited to mythmaking and distortion, at times suggesting one long run-in with authorities interrupted by creative bursts and worldwide adulation. Tagged "the consummate Stone" by Rolling Stone magazine, he stays up for days at a time; in some photos he bears a disquieting resemblance to one of his pieces of skull jewelry. The 20 years have seen dark events--the deaths of Brian Jones and Gram Parsons, Keith's bout with heroin, endless arrests, and murder at the Altamont concert near San Francisco. Not long after his widely publicized 1977 drug trial he sang: "I'm gonna walk, before they make me run."
Claims that the gaunt guitarist is some sort of last word in decadence have filled many pages. It's open to question whether they add up to reveal more about the real Keith Richards than the first ten seconds of "Start Me Up" or the quote by a friend of Gram Parsons in Barbara Charone's book that Keith is "always the last to bed and the first up in the morning playing guitar." Many an interviewer has been startled to discover that behind the quintessential midnight rambler there is an articulate gentleman with an acute sense of artistic direction, a sharp wit, and feelings towards his kids not unlike those of any other family man. In terms of the utter loyalty to the band in which he has spent more than half his life, the man who has been accused of everything up to and including collusion with Satan is, of all things, as pure as a lily.
Up in the hotel room (classic Keith Richards--part Versailles Palace, part blues dive) Keith's dad Bert is smoking a pipe, and his son Marlon--who could dial room service before he could read--is drawing. A cassette bag is crammed with rockabilly, early Dylan, reggae, unmixed Stones, the raunchiest R&B, and more. An old Everly Brothers hit is playing, and delighted Keith Richards identifies a distinctive lead guitar lick: "Chet Atkins!" An hour later, Keith is in the corner playing piano like Ray Charles and singing ballads to himself in a voice cracked with emotion. He plays a wistful "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and than launches into some Jerry Lee Lewis, his foot bashing the floor in tempo. Ron Wood blows in and warmly embraces his partner in guitar. In minutes the two old friends are plugged in, guitars barely in tune, jamming on a medium-tempo 12-bar blues in A. Keith leans over to the black Fender Deluxe Reverb and twists the volume knob from 2 to 6. Ron Wood grins and rips into solo. The real Keith Richards goes a-ronk a-ronk a-ronk.

Chuck Berry was a major influence on your guitar style.
That's quite a left hand he's got there [laughs].
Are the reports true that he punched you in the face?
Yeah, a little while back he did. I came up behind him to say hello. He didn't know it was me and didn't want to be bothered, but I got a nice note from him a little later, actually.
The "Bitch" solo is in a Chuck Berry style...
Which I do every night.
...and the beat turns around several times. Was that completely spontaneous, or semi-planned?
Maybe listeners knew a year or six months later that the beat turned around, but at the moment I wasn't conscious of that. It comes so naturally, as it's always happened, and it's always given that extra kick when the right moment comes back down again. That's what rock and roll records are all about. I mean, nowadays it's "rock" music. But rock and roll records should be two minutes, 35 seconds long, and it doesn't matter if you ramble on longer after that. It should be, you know--wang, concise, right there. Rambling on and on, blah blah blah, repeating things for no point--I mean, rock and roll is in one way a highly structured music played in a very unstructured way, and it's those things like turning the beat around that we'd get hung up on when we were starting out: "Did you hear what we just did? We totally turned the beat around [laughs]!" If it's done with conviction, if nothing is forced, if it flows in, then it gives quite an extra kick to it.
You turn the beat around often. There's the intro to "Start Me Up," where it turns around twice in the first ten seconds, "Little Queenie," where Charlie turns around the intro, and the end of the bass part on "Street Fighting Man," which you played yourself.
Right. You can do that in a band that's got enough confidence not to collapse when it happens. It can make things much more interesting, and it sounds great as long as nobody's fazed by it. You have to be able to keep it straight, thinking about what you're doing at the moment and also about where you're going to take it. I guess that just comes from 20 years, same location.
So many of the things you play, if you were to put them on paper and analyze them musically....
What a mess [laughs]!
For example, the opening of "Start Me Up" is a simple chord change, and yet it's recognizable as the Rolling Stones. The sound is so specific. Would altering anything about it--the echo, tone setting, string gauge--change the impact?
I just can't get the things to sound any different [laughs]. They always come out just about the same when it comes to recording, because without really thinking about it I shift slowly as I go. And no matter where I start, no matter what the guitar or the string, sooner or later I'll get to where the rest of the band is going. I eventually get back to the one kind of thing. It's sort of a trademark sound, but it's more than that because of the way I go about getting it, working it through with what's going on, rather than getting the sound first and then pushing it on the band. A lot of it is adjusting to Ronnie, and Ronnie to me, which brings a certain continuity as well as a certain flexibility.
You've often mentioned the two-guitar sound as a cornerstone of the band. On Still Life there's a different kind of interplay--probably tighter than ever.
Well, Ron's getting better [laughs]. I think that's due to the fact that Ron and I have been working together now since '75, and the more we play together the tighter we get it.
It sounds like you and he are two sides of the same coin, like you could almost change places.
We do [laughs]. If he drops a cigarette I'll play his bit, and we'll realize later that I've covered for him or he's covered for me. And you think at the time, "Oh, my God, what a gap," but when you listen to the tape, you find that it's been fixed right there at the moment, in a very un-thought-about way. We pick it up and cover each other so that sometimes you can't really tell who's playing.
When Ron joined in 1975, did the band have to make a change in the way you interact or rehearse?
No, that was the beauty of it. He was already so familiar with our stuff. After Mick Taylor left, we rehearsed for about six months with a lot of good guitar players from all over the world. And we could work with them, you know; they could work with us. But when Ronnie became available and suddenly walked in, that was it; there was no doubt. It was easy.
With Mick Taylor's style so well defined as a lead guitarist, there seemed to be a clear distinction between the two of you.
It was much harder to get a Rolling Stones sound with Mick Taylor. It was much more lead and rhythm, one way or the other. As fabulous as he is as a lead guitarist, he wasn't a great rhythm player, so we ended up taking roles. When Brian and I started, it was never like that. It's much easier than with Brian, personally. But also with Ron, the basic way we play is much more similar, and this isn't in any way to knock Mick. I mean, he's a fantastic guitar player. But even if he couldn't play shit, I'd love the guy. But chemically we didn't have that flexibility in the band. It was, "You do this, and I'll do that, and never the twain shall meet." With Ron, if he drops his pick, then I can play his lick until he picks it up, and you can't even tell the difference.
Had you and Ron worked together very much before he joined the group?
Yes, for about 18 months. And I did a lot of work on Ronnie's first and second solo albums. He's never been the same since.
Have you found that your styles affected each other, now that you've been working together for several years?
Yeah, that's what's great about it. I neglect something, and he makes up for it. That's the great thing about two guitar players, because if you get it right, you know when to lift one of his licks, and vice versa, without thinking about it. He lifts more of mine than I do of his [laughs].
When the two of you are onstage, how much of your interaction is subject to change?
It depends on the sound system. If you're going to make a change, you need to hear what you're doing in the first place, so a lot of that gets down to technicalities of the stage monitoring. On our last tour in '81 we had those long ramps out to the sides of the stage. The idea of having that stage is to get out where most performers don't get with audiences of that size. Well, if the monitors aren't working out there, and you're just making signs at the sound guys instead of concentrating on your playing, then you forget it, just leave it. But if the sound's good and you can hear everything, then you tend to give it a bit more, adjust more to what's going on, change as you go.
Do you have much trouble communicating onstage at that volume?
It's all done by semaphore and eye signals. It's the only way you can really do it. But the thing is, there isn't that much need for communication or looking at each other, except when things go wrong. Otherwise the communication is just through the music. But if things are going wrong, then everybody's looking at me: "How's he going to get out of this?"
Your records have sort of an indoor sound, the effect of enclosed space. Are you happy with your outdoor concert sound?
Never totally satisfied with live things, no. If you were, you wouldn't keep trying to make it better. But I'm not disappointed with it. You just look forward to being able to do it better. You're always wondering about the people way at the back, what they're hearing. There are so many people and they're so far away--you have no idea what's being heard out there. You're hoping for the best and taking it for granted that the sound crew are doing the job for you and giving out the sound onstage as much as possible to everywhere in the place. But there's the one problem, always that nagging doubt there--they're not all getting it the way they should.
Your live versions of songs are often faster than their studio counterparts--for example, "Shattered" on Still Life. Is that intentional, to make it more exciting for the audience, or is it the adrenaline of performing?
It's the tempo of the whole gig, the adrenaline--especially the huge gigs. The show just takes its own speed from the start, and you go with it. It might be great or it might be terrible, but the tempos one night may be twice as fast as the night after. And you can always learn when you listen back, you see? You may find, "Wow, that should've been that tempo all along--we made the record too slow [laughs]!"
On the live version of "Just my imagination," in the second half the guitar figure changes some notes and sustains others for a country feel, almost like a pedal steel feeling.
That's Ron and me doing the parts together, and you get that sustaining thing like that. We aren't using a pull-string or a lot of slide right now, but Ron plays pedal steel, a bit on "Shattered" and "Faraway Eyes." Country music's a part of the way we do that kind of thing, and it comes through even if it's done with straight guitars sort of pulling up against each other.
Isn't there some slide in "Neighbours" on Tattoo You?
No, but it sounds like it. Ron plays that solo, and a lot of his things on regular guitar sound like they're slide. He's wangled a way of playing it without them, because he keeps losing them [laughs]. At the start of that solo he's bending about four strings. Sounds like slide.
On Still Life's "Let Spend The Night Together," is that a 12-string doubling the vocal melody on the interlude, which ends with "keep on smilin' baby"?
That's one reason we haven't done that one a lot on stage--we could never figure a way 'round that middle bit. No 12-string--just the two run-of-the-mill guitars together, doin' it tight.
The mix of the two guitars on Still Life adjusts in places to the parts you're playing. Is that sort of detail up to your discretion?
Well, I listen for those things, but I may not be there for the first mix. Especially with live stuff, I'd rather let the guy who recorded it get his work into it. Then I get sent the dubs. From the whole tour you have several takes of each song to pick from. The set opened with "Under My Thumb," and it's hard to get the right take, because you're playing right there early, when everybody's trying to get together and nobody knows what's going on. Every night it takes 15 minutes for the sound guys and the recording guys and everybody to fall in and get adjusted, so choosing the take for the first number requires a bit of work. The endings, too. You always wish you could get a couple of takes of the beginning and ending of a show as good as it is in the middle. But every night it's a different problem; you're in a different place, so you see what happens when you get going and take it from there.
On recent tours you've taken occasional breaks from the outdoor arenas, getting into clubs. Do you miss the smaller venues?
Yeah, always. You hate to do the same thing all the time. I love playing the ballparks and the domes, you know. For the satisfaction of the band it gives you a terrific buzz--so many people. But by doing just one thing all the time you forget how to do anything else. You just become good at playing the domes and never learn anything else again. And I've always found that if you put in a few 3,000-seaters on the tour, and even 300, it gives the band itself a confidence quite apart from anything else. Then you can deal with 300 people or 90,000 and know how to play it. And probably the band feels that working in one of the nice old places like the Fox Theater in Atlanta is kind of more satisfying most of the time.
Because of the immediacy?
Yeah. The sound isn't dissipated totally, and you don't have to worry about the wind factor and things like that. It's much simpler and easier to get--it's just [snaps fingers] turn it up, get to it.
Didn't you change to Mesa/Boogie amplifiers on this last tour?
The '81 tour of the States was the first time we used the big Mesa/Boogie amp and speaker setups on the road, but we've been using Boogie amps in the studio since about '77, and on the stage since the '78 tour, slaving small Boogies through Ampeg cabinets.
Do you pay much attention to speakers?
No. I only think about them when I don't like 'em. If I plug in and to me it sounds like crap, then I ask a question, but otherwise, I leave it, because there are guys far more versed. I don't know what speakers are coming out every year. I find something and I stick with it for five or six years. It's like some of the gadgets I use. Guys who work with us and are close to us, like the crew, will say, "You should try this: I think this is going to add to what you're doing." I might try it, although I don't go around looking at specifications and all that.
Were you using any effects onstage in '81?
An MXR analog delay on a few numbers, and a phaser on "Beast Of Burden" and on or two others.
How about the very unusual sound on "Shattered"?
That was the MXR phaser--the 100 model--and I damped the guitar. That's what gives it that sound on the studio version as well.
What kind of wireless systems were you and Ron using on the last tour? Can you get the right tones as easily?
We've been using Nady wireless things since '78, and the tone is a lot better, because cords get stepped on and knotted up and they start rattling a little bit, and you lose tone.
In the last few years there's been a new aspect of your tone--more distinct, with a slight click, almost like a slap bass in rockabilly. "Hang Fire" and "She's So Cold" are examples, and especially the last section of "Little T&A."
It's our equivalent of that rockabilly thing. I think you'll find that comes from using a lot of analog delay on Ron's guitar or my guitar or both of them, and I dampen it. That'll give you that ticka-tacka-ticka. I always use that green MXR analog delay. I'm told it's quite out of date now and old-fashioned, but I got it free and I forgot that time marches on and they make better ones or so they say. I don't know. I've worked very well with those MXR things, and they've been very reliable.
Which guitar are you playing for that sort of stripped-down rockabilly sound on "Little T&A"?
A Telecaster, a '57 set up in 5-string tuning. It's open G 5-string, without the heavy string. Right there from the bottom up it's: G, D, G, B, D. The whole idea of getting rid of the sixth string in the open tuning was having the root on the bottom.
The suspended chords in the verses of that song are typical of your riffing style.
That's just one of the things you can do with open tuning. You can get a drone going so you have the effect of two chords playing against each other. One hangs on because you've just got to move one finger--or two at the most--to change the chord, so you've still got the other strings ringing. It's a big sound.
Mick was using an Ovation Adamas steel-string on the tour. Were you satisfied with the instrument's performance?
I think they're very nice-sounding guitars. A nice neck. But I can never get used to that shape, that... dish. They're probably the best way of amplifying an acoustic guitar and having it still sound like an acoustic. There's no doubt. Probably a million readers will write in and say the Stones don't use acoustic guitar that much onstage, so we don't know shit, but for what we need, for a couple of numbers, it's adequate.
How did you come about acquiring your new guitars?
Friends of mine introduced me to Doug Young, who built them. After seeing some of his things, I knew he was capable of exceptionally fine work, so I more or less commissioned him to build me a guitar. He ended up making me two--the red one is a gift for my girlfriend, actually. Basically, that's the lowdown.
Did you specify exactly what you wanted?
Not really. We didn't have to say very much about it. I was very impressed by the things I saw, and I wanted a similar guitar for myself. But it's also this patronage that players and builders can get involved with--Renaissance man, and all that, the old system of someone like me encouraging guys like Doug. His guitars are too good not to be given help.
So you didn't request a certain wood for the fingerboard, a certain pickup design?
Not too much, no. I said, "Make me a guitar." I figure that's the difference between working with an artist as opposed to just anyone. I mean, if you want a suit made, you don't want to have to tell the tailor how to do everything. You want to find someone who doesn't need all that, you see? It's more, "I want to see what you can build for me." There are very few people like that. Most people, you have to sit on their ass and watch them: with Doug I just left him to it. I was in Paris for months, recording. I'd almost forgotten it was going on until I saw what he'd done.
Have you had a chance to play them in the studio yet?
Not in the studio, but I went out and banged on them a bit. I'll be back in the studio soon, and then we'll beat them into shape [laughs].
After playing hundreds of guitars, what quality in these instruments made you take notice?
It's a recognition you develop. I think, and I'm sort of instinctive about these things--sit down and play it, feel it. I knew that Doug was thinking along the same lines as myself, but far ahead, because I'm not technical. Only after the event of building it when I've got it in my hands, can I know what's right. I can't say, "Well, it was the magnificent electronics," or "the wonderful bonding of the woods," and each specific thing. It was simply a fine instrument. Lovely wood!
Can you judge the sound of an electric before you plug it in?
Maybe to a certain extent. If the neck and the action feel right, you're more than halfway home, even before hearing the electronics. Things like weight and the density of the wood indicate certain things, but you simply need to play it to really tell. And it doesn't take long.
On record you've used several very different types of guitars--Gibson Les Pauls and ES-335s, Fender Telecasters, and others. And yet a listener can tell right away that it's you, from stylistic clues, but also from the sound alone.
I use a whole load of different guitars, that's true, but they're not all that dissimilar in type. I mean, ninety percent are probably Telecasters, old ones, but more than that, you can't really separate style and sound, you see. People do separate them when they're talking about music, but all of that often misses the whole point.
You're suggesting that the style is the sound?
Yes, part of it, more than any particular tone setting or pickup or anything like that. I'll just adjust to the sound of the track as we go--the sound of the bass drum and especially Ronnie's guitar. The style is adjusting along with the sound. There's never a conscious effort to get that "Honky Tonk Woman" tone or a thing like that. You may get it or you may not. But that's not what you're thinking about. You're thinking about the track.
Some people were amazed to read in your first Guitar Player cover story that on "Street Fighting Man" there are no electric guitars.
Two acoustics, one of them put through the first Philips cassette player they made. It was overloaded, recorded on that, and then hooked up through a little extension speaker, and then onto the studio tape through a microphone.
You've paid quite a bit of attention to acoustic guitars in rock music.
Well, I started on acoustic guitar, and you have to recognize what it's got to offer. But also you can't say it's an acoustic guitar sound, actually, because with the cassette player and then a microphone and then the tape, really it's just a different process of electrifying it. You see, I couldn't have done that song or that record in that way with a straight electric, or the sustain would have been too much. It would have flooded too much. The reason I did that one like that was because I already had the sound right there on the guitar before we recorded. I just loved it, and when I wrote the thing I thought, "I'm not going to get a better sound than this." And "Jumpin' Jack Flash" is the same, too. That's acoustic guitar.
Early Everly Brothers records have huge acoustic guitar sounds. Were any of them influential?
Yeah, all of their records, and also there's the fact that the first major tour we ever did was supporting the Everly Brothers, Little Richard, and Bo Diddley. Plenty to learn [laughs] in a real short time, following those guys around. The Everlys came on with just their trio and themselves, and it was great. On their recordings there is a certain power in the steel-string. It's a different instrument from electric--not that different in the way you play it, but in terms of the sound. There are times when an acoustic guitar will make a track. You'll be despairing, nothing working, hashing away, Take 43 on electric guitar, and somebody will say, "Why don't you try it on acoustic?" And you try it one time and you've got it.
What kind of acoustics do you like to use?
Old Martins--several types of them--and certain Gibsons, particularly old Hummingbirds.
Do you have a certain kind of room that you like to record in?
Yes, but it's hard to tell whether it'll work until we get in there. And when we find a room I hate to lose it. Over the years we've been through four or five or maybe more of these ace rooms. Sometimes you walk in and it just happens, but whether it takes a long time or not to produce the sound you want, you don't want to lose it. We're still working in the same place now that we've been in since Some Girls, a good big room. Pathe Marconi is the name--it's EMI's studio in Paris. The room we use is what they consider their sort of storeroom for the orchestra, or a rehearsal place. It's not Studio A, B, or C. It doesn't even have a number.
How important is the sound of the room itself?
The room is as important as the band and the producer and the song and the engineer. The room is at least as important as all that to the total sound. You can't separate rock and roll music instrument by instrument. You destroy the whole structure of it. Rock and roll music can only be recorded by jamming the sound all together.
One you've got something to work right in the studio, do you try to use all the same equipment onstage?
Yeah, pretty much, just a larger version. I've never found the Stones or anybody else made great records by using huge stacks in the studio and blasting away. You can get very powerful sounding records playing very quietly, and with relatively small amps. Small amps turned way up have the tension you're trying to get anyway, and it sounds big. It also gets back to that recognition of the acoustic guitar and what it can do, and what you can get if you're thinking of the mix right from the beginning and all the way through the recording.
Years ago the mixing technique on many of your records broke quite a few rules. Did you realize from the outset of your career that a new way of mixing would be necessary?
We knew we wanted it without knowing the way to get it. It was just what sounded right to us, and also because we were brought up in the era when a four-track was a rarity. We started recording at a point when the best sound you got was all air and all the room sound and everything was leakage and jammed together, and the vocal fought its battle with the rest of the instruments. We tried it the usual way, but whenever we brought the vocals up we'd never like the mix as much. What always amazed me was that if the record was popular, most people would know the words--at least the key ones--within a few weeks, no matter how much the voice was buried. Years back, in the studio, I always thought about those other records where the voice was too far forward, so you never really got a sound. You just got a vocalist with some accompaniment.
Which wasn't what you were after?
Not for us, but you see, you've got to treat each type of music in the appropriate fashion. I mean, if you're mixing the Everly Brothers, then you've got those fantastic goddamn voices and you put them out front as much as you can! But even those guys never sacrificed the sound of the record for the sound of their voices. They had it all there, quite a light sound, but always very powerful as well, never wimpy.
Did record companies ever tell you or your producers and engineers that you should be mixing Mick Jagger like the Everly Brothers?
They'd try, but we set it up so there was no way they had anything to say about it. They'd complain, and we'd tell them to fuck off.
Do you ever splice takes, either rhythm tracks or solos?
Sometimes. Not so much on solos. We tend to record them real long--go on and on, but as long as I know that somewhere in that seven or eight or eleven minutes there is that two-and-a-half minutes that says it all, then I don't mind going on, because I'll ferret it out and find it.
Is it too soon to start talking about what's on the next album?
I can only report that it's going magnificently for us, so much stuff coming out and starting to sound real good. We've only been in the studio a little over two weeks, which is only like a warm-up, and we've cut about a dozen cassettes of tape already. Everybody's happy about it. When we're done, we'll start thinking about the next tour.
In the choruses of "Honky Tonk Woman" and "Start Me Up," the bass leaves huge holes for the guitars to fill. Does Bill Wyman get a lot of direction from you in that regard, or is that something he's always done on his own?
I would say in the late '60s, early '70s, Bill would be given more direction--not always the right direction [laughs]--but Mick and I would be more inclined to say, "Do this and that." Sometimes he comes and asks, but less and less. You know, relationships change. But Bill, he's kind of like Charlie. He just keeps [long pause] amazing me. He just keeps getting better. He's not always what I'm expecting. I know he's good, and he's always there. But I kind of take his playing for granted. And then when I listen to what he's doing, I realize he's not always playing the same thing. He's much better than we think. You see, we're the worlds worst Rolling Stones critics [laughs]. We tear the shit apart before anybody gets a chance to hear it.
Do you practice very much aside from band rehearsals for tours or recording sessions?
In a way I do, because the guitar is always there, and I always play it or the piano. I do it in bursts. You kind of wait for it. You can't force it and sit down and say, "Now I'm going to write a hit song."
You've recorded a lot of material on your own--just vocals with piano or guitar. Do you plan to ever release any of it?
No, not releasing it as such. I just do it because I like to play a lot of great songs for myself, and it helps me to write. The way I write songs is to sit down and play 25 great songs by other people and hope that one of mine drips off the end.
Have many of the songs that you've written for the Stones been composed on the piano?
Sometimes, yeah. I'm such an amateur on piano, and that can help. You play guitar every night and get to know it so well, and a lot of great songs are really accidents. On the piano I may come across something I wouldn't have done on guitar.
You've sung lead on some of the band's hits, and sang "Little T&A" on the last tour, but none of your lead vocals are included on the album.
Well, if I sing the lead vocals, then what's he going to do [laughs]? There's quite a bit for each of us to think about already. And I do sing lots of parts with Mick, always.
For years Mick has been reported to be a proficient guitar player, and yet he only started to play a lot onstage during the Still Life tour. Why now?
I think he feels a little more confident about it. He's a fine drummer, too. And he's not bad on keyboards, in his own way--in the same way that I am, fiddling about to write and to get some interesting ideas. One thing that's held Mick back with guitar onstage is that playing is one thing; knowing how to get an instantly good sound off the amp is another. That is something he's still got to work on. It keeps him back from doing so much, because if it doesn't sound good to him in the first six bars, he doesn't have the experience and the knowledge of dealing with the amplifier. He might be playing great, but he's got a shitty sound on the amp--and then he's got his singing to think about.
Are you playing much National or Dobro these days?
Not doing as much of that as I'd like--that goes with not living anywhere in particular. You need to sort of sit down every day and do that. I hate to travel with instruments like that. I think you just need a certain environment when you're playing like that, and since that's not the way we are able to live, and probably wouldn't anyway, I don't get as much of a chance. You know, some things you don't get as much of a chance to do as you wish you had.
For young guitarists who are into Chuck Berry or the Rolling Stones today, what do they face, trying to make records now? Compared to when you started, what's different?
24-track machines. Otherwise, not that much has changes from what we faced. There's all this stuff about new equipment and changing styles and all that, but the point is, you still face a lot of rip-off artists, and you face a lot of work.
You and Pete Townshend seem to have much in common, at least on the surface--the components of your styles, your use of the guitar, the way your bands are compared in the press. Do you feel any particular kinship with him?
You mean Trousers? Now let me see--one reason for that is probably that we started playing the same clubs almost at the same time. I never took credit for this, but apparently he said that he lifted that arm swing he does from seeing me. I don't recall doing it, but I guess if he says so, he did. It's something I've never been aware of. In certain respects, yeah, we're both coming out in the same place at the same time, more than anything else.
He was quoted as saying that there comes a time for a band to retire, to pass on the torch, so to speak, to younger bands.
I love Peter, but the time to stop is when you can't do it anymore, or when you're fed up. There's no passing on of the goddamn torches. Other people will pick them up anyway, and besides, that's not the point. I don't know if he was accurately quoted, but other people have said it anyway when they can't think of anything else to say. You see, if rock and roll is what you do, then that's what you do, and that's all. You don't sort of say, " Oh, now I give up and I'll hand it on to this band who I think is quite good." You don't hand it on that way. Pete already handed it on, the same as we did, to some young guys that are playing now, the way we played Chuck Berry. It's not, "here, I've got to hand you a document." It's the records that you've done that the younger players have listened to and grown up with and sat around learning.
What would you like to be doing a year from now?
Accepting a platinum record, for one thing [laughs]. I'd like nothing to change too much, just to do what we do, but be able to do it better.
After one of your court trials you commented on systems of justice and juries of your peers, and how that all related to being a musician.
Yeah, I was trying to make the point that when I am thrown in a court, or anybody like myself is thrown in court, the jury has got absolutely no experience in the musician's way of life, so they're not your peers. I know justice is often rough and so on, but they don't know what it's like to be on the road for 20 years, and I can't explain it to them now. So I was saying, give me a jury of my peers, with Chuck Berry, with Muddy Waters. And put Ron in there, too [laughs]--I mean, I can drop him a few bucks.
People keep calling you the world's greatest rock and roll band, and they have been for a long time.
It's embarrassing.
Are there any drawbacks to their saying that?
Yeah, you've gotta keep being it [laughs]! I've decided that every night there's another world's greatest rock and roll band, because one night somebody has an off gig, and some other shit band has a great gig. That's one of the great things about rock and roll--every night there's a different world's greatest band. We've been maybe a little more consistent, for whatever reason, mainly when we're going together on a tour and also because we've managed to stick together. The chemistry--that's got nothing to do with musicianship. It's got to do with personality and characters and being able to live with each other for 20 years.
People have been predicting the end of the Stones...
...from the beginning [laughs]!
With the kind of life you seem to lead, longevity might appear to be the last thing you'd be able to gain. What's the secret?
The secret is, there is no secret. It's finding people that not only play well with you, but that you can get along with. There's no constant battle about who's Mister Big, none of those problems. When I see Charlie and Bill--I ain't seen 'em for a few weeks--it's like a pleasure. Ron says we're his closest friends. I guess that's the only secret.
Is that what it means to play in a band?
Most people don't know what a band is. People have heroes, and they copy them--I mean, we copied things very carefully when we started. But you don't get this picture and then do everything to fit it. You do what you do. The musicians are there to contribute to the band sound. The band isn't there for showing off solos or egos. A lick on a record--it doesn't matter who played it. All that matters is how it fits. The chemistry to work together like that has to be there. You have to work on it, always--figure out what to do with it. But basically it's not an intellectual thing you can think up and just put there. It has to be there. You have to find it.

Keith Richards Melody Maker janvier 1979

An Outlaw At The Ritz: Keith Richards
Chris Welch, Melody Maker, 13 January 1979

In which Keef holds up the price of Smirnoff shares, little Marlon holds up his Dad, Anita Pallenberg holds up the interview, and CHRIS WELCH holds his own.
UP AT THE Ritz Hotel in Piccadilly, the air of 19th century opulence and grandeur extends to the elevators, which are paneled in polished wood. On the surface of the lift that carried me to the fourth floor, someone had scratched "Rolling MOSS!" It was a petty piece of vandalism which hinted at the dark conspiracies that still seem to surround the Rolling Stones.
Who, on this freezing January night, would know that one of the last folk heroes of rock’n’roll was in residence? Who would inscribe strange messages for him — friend or foe?
Outside the double doors of Keith’s suite, one could hear the familiar sound of a rock band in occupation of expensive territory: ‘phones ringing, a tape machine relaying insidious reggae, girlish cries, and repeated clamours for room service.
It suddenly occurred to me I hadn’t interviewed Keith Richards since 1966. And that was in a hotel room too, with Mick Jagger, talking about Between The Buttons. The weird thing was, Keith seemed to think it had been only yesterday.
Keith, not long freed by a Canadian court on drug charges, a onetime heroin addict who now keeps life at bay with hearty draughts of vodka, is an extraordinarily charming man, possessing infinite patience. While his speech and thoughts are sometimes held in check by the flow of soporifics and stimulants holding their own press conference inside his head, his acerbic wit and hard-bitten worldly wisdom remain intact.
Roaming the suite were Barbara Charone, the American journalist, just completing her forthcoming book on Keith’s life, and the remarkable Anita Pallenberg, Keith’s lady, who is described in Anthony Scaduto’s book on Jagger as "a very wicked lady, not human, extrahuman." I had a taste of the alleged wickedness when Anita set about systematically destroying the interview.
But even Anita, at her most irritating, was often very funny, and the dialogue between the pair was often more illuminating than the polite record of intentions.
Another member of this strange little circle was Marion, Keith’s and Anita’s nine-year-old son, a bright, good-looking kid who seemed more together than any of us. He’ll make a fine tour manager one day.
Despite the inroads on his stamina made by the vodka, Keith was keen to talk about anything. It was not until a few hours had elapsed that one realised that he had been packing away enough liquor to fell a fair-sized ox.
"I don’t want no tea, or coffee," he told Barbara at one point. "I just want this bottle."

KEITH: All right, leave me to it, you’ve heard it all before.
ANITA: I haven’t heard it all before.
MM: Can we turn the music down a little bit?
KEITH: Sure!
(The conversation begins, but there is a flow of interruption from Anita, as we talk cursorily about last year’s American tour. Eventually Keith betrays impatience, as Pallenberg answers yet another question for him.)
KEITH: Look, darling, will you please shut up!
(His remonstrance has little effect and she keeps up a heavy barrage of Anglo-German mutterings.)
KEITH: Back to my train of thought. That was a really good tour, especially the small theatres. We didn’t know half of them existed. The Palladium in New York was great. That was the last playing we did, apart from a thing at the Bottom Line with Nick Lowe, which was to celebrate my freedom. What I’m doing here is taking a look at the old country. It’s two years since I’ve been here, and I couldn’t stand the idea of having another American Christmas...you know, there’s nothing more disturbing than two chicks whispering to each other.
(Keith looked crossly towards Barbara and Anita, ensconced on the couch and giggling.)
ANITA: Oh, Just throw me out. Don’t mind it. I mean...y’know...all that about the Palladium, that’s OLD stuff.
MM: We were just recapping.
ANITA: Keith — he’s got future plans, I tell you.
MM: I’m sure we’ll get to that.
KEITH: Now I’ve gotta think of something.
ANITA: Throw me out if you want to. (She clings firmly to the sofa.)
KEITH: I don’t want it to get that far. I was saying, I came home to see my folks, which I haven’t done yet. I still have a house here, at Redlands, but due to the quirks of the IRS (Inland Revenue Service), I’m not allowed to stay in it. I can look over the fence, and say, "Oh what a nice house, I wish I could go in there." I’m allowed 90 days a year in the country. I thought if you stayed away two years you could have 180 days the third year, but it doesn’t work like that.
MM: What have you missed about England?
KEITH: I missed the sarcastic coppers...I’m probably a little out of touch with the music here, but most of the stuff that’s happening here has lost touch with itself anyway. It’s back to fads. One minute it’s Bay City Rollers, then it’s Punk Rock, then it’s Power Pop or New Wave, then that’s finished...people are back to sticking labels on things. Elvis Costello. I’ve ‘eard his stuff. I’d sooner see him live, that’s all I care about. I don’t care about album production. I like Ian Dury, he’s down to the bone. As long as there’s something happening here, that’s all that really matters. Where they went wrong with the punk thing was they were trying to make four-track records on 32-track. We were trying to do the same thing in a way. We tried to make 1964 sound like 1956, which wasn’t possible either. But we did end up with something that was our own. The gap between ‘76 and ‘62 as far as recording technology was concerned, was too big. I think Punk Rock was great theatre, and it wasn’t all crap. But at the beginning I saw the Sex Pistols on TV trying to think of a few extra swear words in front of Grundy, and I thought their vocabulary was rather limited. But I’ve no doubt they’ve learnt a few words since then. The music was all incidental, like background music. You just had to see it.
ANITA: Mumble, mumble.
KEITH: Look darling, who’s doing this interview?
ANITA: I am!
KEITH: The problem is if two people talk at once, you don’t hear anything.
(Anita’s noisy demands that the conversation should turn to future plans were now impossible to ignore.)
MM: Are you planning a solo album?
KEITH: It just so happens that I’ve met a few people during the past year or so, and we’ve got together and put some stuff on tape. That’s as far as it goes, and whether it comes out or not is another thing. They’ve put a single out in the States of ‘Run, Run Rudolph’ with ‘The Harder They Come’, and...er...no one likes it. It’s the first time I’ve put a record out, and it was cut at Island in Hammersmith two years ago. It hasn’t been released here; we’re letting the Americans suffer first.
ANITA: I find that very significant.
KEITH: Jolly good.
MM: But are you hoping to get a solo album out?
ANITA: Yes.
KEITH: No...certain executives are. I don’t give a shit. I’ve got some stuff but I don’t know if roots reggae is what people want to hear from me. That’s most of the stuff I’ve done while playing with Tosh’s band in Kingston. Either I cut some more to make enough for an album or I leave it in the warehouse. I dunno — I can’t think about an album until I’ve got the whole thing in front of me. The only thing that stops me is that...
ANITA: The only thing that stops me is that I need the whole thing in front of me...
KEITH: Look, go and read your scripts. When I’ve got an album’s worth of material in front of me, then I’ll think about it. I’ve got Robbie Shakespeare on bass. Sly Dunbar on drums, plus two percussion men, Ansel Collins on organ, Robert Lynn on piano and Big Mao on guitar.
MM: Do you get the same satisfaction from reggae that you got from R&B back in the ‘60s?
KEITH: Yeah, I find that I’m drawn to it for the same reasons, and because there’s nothing happening in black American music. There’s probably more happening in white American music at the moment. They’re going through the formula disco phase, and of course it’s very popular so it’s no wonder people are drawn to it. The temptation to make those records is so strong.
MM: Do Rastafarians accept you, as a white musician playing reggae?
KEITH: As far as I’m concerned, I’m not white and they’re not black. It’s just something you don’t think about. They make me feel very comfortable when I’m on their turf and I do the best to make them feel the same.
MM: Do you have to adapt your style much to play reggae?
KEITH: Not much, I’ve been going to Jamaica for over ten years. ‘67 was the first visit and in ‘72 we lived there for a whole year. Ever since then I’ve had a house there. We lived on the beach for a long while before we realised it’s the dumb thing to do. Everything goes rusty from the salt, from your guitar strings to the Range Rover. The hip thing to do is live on the other side of the road, on top of the cliff where you get a breeze even when it’s really hot. People may say: "Oh, now he’s doing his reggae bit." I’ll go the whole way with it or just record it for fun and put it in the vaults, until it’s acceptable to everybody. Five years ago there were people who said they could never get behind reggae...
ANITA: Like Keith Richard.
KEITH: Thank YOU darling... okay, fuck off.
ANITA: You baam claat man.
MM: What DOES that mean?
KEITH: It was a cloth that they used to mop up the blood after whipping a slave.
MM: Good grief.
KEITH: That’s one interpretation, but every other Rastafarian will tell you another.
(The conversation mysteriously got on to the subject of the toothless whores of Kingston, and we mentioned that until recently Keith had been conspicuous by his deficiencies in the molar department.)
KEITH: Miraculously, due to abstinence and prayer, my teeth grew back! I think I was just late developing. Nothing an expensive operation couldn’t prolong. Considering all the thumping hearts of the last year, I feel quite good: But I don’t feel that a great weight has been lifted from my mind. They’ve put in an appeal in Canada, so we’re back to square one. I don’t have to go through the whole, case again, but if the appeal judge says the trial judge was wrong, then I’m back where I started. But I never thought much about it anyway, not until I had to go to Canada and stand in the dock. It was very boring having to sit there and listen to it all. I thought the judge was fair and that the Canadians knew enough to leave well alone. Now they’ve turned it into a stupid internal squabble. It’s Canada v. The Rolling Stones. The trial judge did his best to please everybody. I don’t have to make any more appearances, only in concert in front of the blind. How can you appear in front of the blind? But whoever I have to play for, the blind, deaf or bubonic plague vicitims, I’ll do what I’ve always done anyway. I’m leaving it all to the people who set shows up, but I guess it’ll end up in Maple Leaf Gardens. We’ll do it, probably with the Stones, and Peter Tosh.
ANITA: Sid Vicious will be the next.
KEITH: Sid — yeah. He’s been a silly boy. Just because he woke up with a knife in his hands, he thinks he done it. I have a feeling he didn’t. It was probably some very sharp New York dealer. Nobody deserves a trial, whether it’s in Canada or New York. I mean, I didn’t screw Margaret Trudeau. Ah, hah! But in that case — who did? Who ripped the flimsy bathrobe aside? I end up feeling that I have to pay for the Rape of Canada. But I didn’t have nuthin’ to do with it. And as far as I could see they were after Trudeau anyway, because you’ve got a civil war brewing there. Both sides were trying to use me as part of their internal conflict. But they’re the bastards that make us all-important. It’s not as if I, or anybody involved with us, has ever gone around saying, "Oh it’s great to be on dope. Everybody should do it." Whatever my lifestyle is, or whatever my problems, I don’t encourage others to follow me. Thinking about the bust, what disappointed me was that not one of them was wearing a proper Mounties uniform when they burst into my hotel room. They were all in Anoraks with droopy moustaches and bald heads. Real WEEDS, the whole lot of ‘em, all just after their picture in the paper. Fifteen of ‘em, round me bed, trying to wake me up. I’d have woken up a lot quicker if I’d seen the red tunic and Smokey Bear hat. I was taken down to the jail and I asked them to give me a couple of grammes back, just to tide me over.
MM: Do you ever regret starting to take drugs?
KEITH: No, I don’t regret nothin’. I just got bored with it [heroin]. It would take more than the Mounties to turn me off something, if I really wanted to stay on it. Because I know damn well that in those pens (penitentiaries), you can get as much as you want. The first day in Wormwood Scrubs, during the first exercise period, I was tapped on the shoulder and some geezer said: "Want some hash?" I said: "Lay off! I wanna get out of here!" That was years ago. Can you imagine what it’s like now? All you’ve gotta do is bend over twice or have the right amount of tobacco, and you’ve got whatever you want. I still remember that fucking screw at the Scrubs, when Mick picked me up in me Bentley — which was a bit much, he should have used a minicab — I remember the screw shouting at the gates, "You’ll be back, we’ll get ya!" You were in Rome doing Barbarella, darlin.’ (Keith addressed Anita, still keeping up her monologue from the sofa) while I was doing time.
ANITA: Na, na, na, na, na.
KEITH: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes — we won’t talk about that anymore. We’ll argue about that later.
MM: Do you feel healthier now?
KEITH: Different. I suppose you could say healthier, although I must say, in all fairness to the poppy, that never once did I have a cold. I’m gonna blurt it out now, right? The cure to the common cold is there — but, of course, they daren’t let anybody know because you’d have a nation full of dope addicts. This winter I’ve had two colds. But I don’t recommend drugs to anybody. What’s really wrong is 12-year-old kids on the street scoring dope that’s got strychnine thrown in, to give you extra flash for fun. That’s wrong, because it retards you. I know one junkie in London who started at 14, and kicked the habit when he was twenty. And then his voice broke. It slows down the metabolism. The worst thing is the ignorance of people taking things without knowing what they’re doing.
MM: And you need the appropriate lifestyle and freedom to be able to indulge.
KEITH: I don’t know if it’s that. Half the reason I got drawn into it was because I didn’t have a lot of freedom and time off. If I’d have had the freedom and time I could have dragged myself off to somewhere remote for three months and cleaned myself up and pulled myself together. But in this business, you find there’s always something that has to be done, a new tour or whatever, and before you know it, five years has gone.
MM: Did coming off drugs affect the way you play or write?
KEITH: I would like to say...hum...actually, after watching stuff I’ve done when I know I was out of my brain, and don’t even remember the show, da da dum...not really. I mean, I’d like to say it did, to encourage anybody to get off it, but the only difference, now I’m off it, is I enjoy what I do much more. Also I can remember enjoying it. One show was just like another...it was like a tunnel that got smaller and smaller.
(Keith ruled out the possibility of his doing shows on his own outside of the Stones, and talked about his working relationship with Mick Jagger.)
KEITH: For what I do and for what the rest of the band does, I don’t think I could do it any better elsewhere in a different set up. Sometimes I might do the odd song, and that’s the way we’ve always worked. Mick might say, "Your rough tape has got the best feel, why don’t you do that one?" But we still work closely on songs. We enjoyed making Some Girls, it was the most immediate album we’d done in ages, and you can’t argue with seven million sales, as far as acceptance goes. I don’t think there’s that much between it and Black & Blue or Goat’s Head Soup. It’s just that suddenly the timing clicks. That’s the thing in this lark, it’s the timing. It could just as easily have bombed. ‘Miss You’ wasn’t specifically recorded as a disco single, it was just another track for Some Girls. ‘Hot Stuff’ was disco-ish too, and so were some others if you want to dig down. All that really matters is that it took off, at the right period in the band’s evolution.
MM: The bass riff on ‘Miss You’ had a lot to do with its success.
KEITH: Bill is leaping ahead. Charlie is so magnificent you expect him to go on getting better, and if it doesn’t get better at a session you sorta moan at him, "Why aren’t you better than last time ‘cos you always are!" Bill tends to go more in cycles, and in the last couple of years I haven’t seen him so happy and playing so well. Something like ‘Miss You’ proves it.
MM: What’s the origin of the Glimmer Twins pseudonym for you and Mick?
KEITH: Glimmer Twins came from the infamous cruise from Lisbon to Rio in Christmas '68 with Mick and Marianne, Anita and myself. We met this very vivacious woman. When she got drunk, all she would ever say was, "Who are you, Won't you give us a glimmer?" I just loved the way she said it, so we became the Glimmer Twins.
MM: Whatever happened to Nanker and Phelge?
KEITH: That included the whole band, it wasn't just me and Mick. Phelge was the name of a guy that lived with us in Edith Grove at World's End, who was one of the most disgusting people that I've ever known. I've forgotten his real name, but he was known as Phelge and he was the sort of guy who would meet you on the stairs of your slum with his streaked Y-fronts on his head, and nothing else, and he'd say: "This is Phelge — welcome home. Unfortunately I haven't made enough money this week to help chip in with the rent, so instead I'll entertain you and be as disgusting as possible for the whole week." He was the sort of guy who would nail up the johnwhile you're in there and lower a tape recorder in through the window and capture the moment when the victim couldn't get the door open. He ended up with a whole reel of tape and every time it got to the bit where they flushed the toilet you'd hear a roar of applause. It was a great tape — unfortunately nobody kept it.
MM: And Nanker, who was he?
KEITH: One of Brian's inventions and deserves to stay with him.
ANITA: (Censored interruption in which she revealed that Brian Jones had once done something very peculiar to a chicken.)
KEiTH: He was always very good with his hands.
MM: Do you still enjoy playing R&B tunes like 'King Bee'?
KEITH: If we have a session suddenly come up, to warm up we do the old Richmond set, just to get the chops together. We do 'Route 66' and 'King Bee'. I'd play you a tape of us jamming, but unfortunately it went up in the Hollywood fire. Don't ask me what happened — I was asleep.
MM: You do seem to have a lot of dramatic events in your life. Do you get the feeling someone is following you around?
KEITH: Mmmmmm... not really. I've had two or three houses burnt down. Redlands burned down once — the roof went with the whole top floor.
MM: That was two fires. What was the third?
KEiTH: Londonderry Hotel. I should have got a medal for that one.
ANITA: Keith! Keith! It's Marlon.
KEITH: Here's my man, he's the one who straightened me out.
(And nine-year-old Mar-ion came in armed with Action Man toys, anxious that the mysterious conference should come to an end and that Dad should take him down to Redlands. Keith and Marlon embraced and the boy turned away from the photographer.)
KEITH: Marlon, now look at the camera.
MARLON: No! (Meanwhile, Anita fixed me with a steely gaze.)
ANITA: Christ you are a star. Ho, ho, ho.
(She mimics my deprecatory mirth. The constant barrage is becoming unnerving, but unfortunately there are no blunt instruments to hand.)
MM: Are the Stones going to play in England this year?
KEITH: We gotta. We gotta play England and Europe this year. Fuck movies. There's nothing concrete, and I can't say when or where. Originally we were going to come to Europe last year, but it was big mouths in Paris that blew the whole deal. We were going to play the Palace, which I like very much. When you read about it they always say it's Paris's attempt at a Studio 54, in fact it's a real theatre and holds about 2,000. In New York they ruined a perfectly good theatre by filling it with faggots in boxing shorts waving champagne bottles in front of your face.
MM: The last time you played in England you got criticised because of the bad sound.
KEITH: Well, when we were playing at Earl's Court it wasn't until the last night they realised that the balcony there was solid steel, behind the plaster, and that's where the weird echo was coming from. It helps a band like Pink Floyd, when you want a very spacey sound, but for a band like us that uses a lot of middle and bottom — forget it, there's no way you can get the Sound across. It just sounds like endless feedback. But I know we were playing good at Earl's Court, and I'm the first to say when we're playing bad, I'll tell ya. I have the tape from Earl's Court and those shows were some of the best on the tour.
MM: Do you still get a kick out of playing?
KEiTH: Look, this is the sort of band that if I didn't get a kick out of it, I would retire the next day. There's nobody in this band you can persuade to do something, unless they wanted to. Charlie hates going on the road, but he likes it enough to still pack his suitcase. He only ever carries a hold-all with a change of clothes in it, because he likes to pretend he's going home the next day.
ANITA: Not like Rod Stewart. His suitcases have got wheels.
KEITH: Rod cancelled that Lyceum show, didn't he? That was a cheap trick. The diplomatic excuse was that the band had got laryngitis. But how many shows can you do with Billy Peek without puking?
MM: Is he that bad, Keith?
KEITH: Oh, maybe that was a bit extreme. But I listened to that single Rod put out, and I look at the peroxide hair, and I like the guy, I always have done, bit I feel like saying: "Now look, cunt, you don't need it." I was just thinking there isn't a band left from when we started that has still got the original line-up, now that Moony has kicked the bucket. Ashes to ashes.
ANITA: That was the best comment of the whole interview.
(The waves of verbal static from Anita increased to such a pitch at this point that Keith was eventually goaded into asking her to vacate the premises, an invitation she gracefully declined. Meanwhile we turned to the barriers in outrage, which have been finally smashed asunder.)
MM: Is it possible for the Rolling Stones to shock people anymore?
ANITA: They can't, they're past it.
KEITH: We never did anything consciously to shock people. All we ever did was answer the call of nature.
ANITA: Oh, gosh.
KEITH: It's true. If you're consciously trying to shock people, you might as well forget it. The comparison between Malcolm McLaren and the Pistols, and Andrew Oldham and the Stones —well, it was just too obvious. Too obvious to work, and it didn't work. I'm sure Johnny Rotten sussed it was a set-up and went along with it, and the others couldn't think of enough swear words to keep it going. "You, you, b-b –bastard."
ANITA: So, they'd got a speech defect, so what.
KEITH: I didn't say they had speech defects, I said they couldn't curse properly.
(Keith discussed further the perils of Sid Vicious, and mentioned that he used to stay at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, where the murder of Nancy Spungen took place.)
KEITH: There was a guy called Zimmerman on the floor above making a fucking row with a guitar all day, and next door there was this Nico with a harmonium, with a hole in her windbag. If you let the maid in to clean your room, everything would be gone. You had to be a certified dealer to get a job as a bellboy.
(Marlon increased his demands to be taken down to Redlands. Keith tottered to-wards the tape machine and played some Stones demos and jams.)
MM: What's the next Stones album going to sound like?
KEITH: You're talking to the wrong man! I'll write it in the studio when we get there. This is all pure bluff.
(Keith disappeared, and for an hour or so we sat listening to Anita chatter gaily about her modelling career. Marlon re-entered the room, announced that Keith had gone to sleep. I found him lying on a bed, Marlon keeping watch. "Goodnight. Keith," I whispered.)
© Chris Welch, 1979