Keith Richards

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Keith Richards (born Keith Richard December 18, 1943. During the 1970s, he officially changed his name from 'Richard' to 'Richards') is rhythm and occasional lead guitarist for The Rolling Stones, the band he founded with vocalist Mick Jagger and Brian Jones in 1962. Jagger and Richards share songwriting duties for the Stones. The Rolling Stones are the longest lasting group of first generation rock and roll bands that emerged out of England in the early 1960's. They have produced a unprecedented collection of material in over forty years of performing and recording.

Early life

Keith Richard was a war-baby born in the "crossfire hurricane" of Nazi bombings in the Battle of Britian. An only child, reportedly conceived as a way to get his mother Doris Richard off the War time factory production line, Richards admired the singing American Western film star Roy Rogers growing up. Richards father Bert was a disabled War veteran, and working class factory labourer. Despite the family's modest station, Richard's paternal grandparents were socialists and civic leaders. His maternal grandfather was a one time jazz/big band musician, that had toured Britain. In interviews, Richards often cites his mother's father as a leading influence in his young life. His parents divorced around the same time Keith was expelled from Sidcup Art College. The divorce lead to a period of long estrangement from his father, dating almost twenty years. Between 1961-1981, Keith Richards did not see or talk to his father, although he remained close with his mother, who eventually remarried. During the 1980s, son and father reconciled, and Bert Richards even accompanied his son on Rolling Stone tours during that period.

Career accomplishments

The Rolling Stones began as a cover band in England, playing blues and early rock'n'roll covers. Their first recordings reflect this, I Just Want to Make Love to You, Not Fade Away, Little Queenie, Carol, and It's All Over Now are all American cover songs. Andrew Loog Oldham became the Stones first manager and forced Jagger, Richards and Jones to write songs. Jones was unable to contribute meaningfully, and Jagger and Richards became the primary songwriters. The Last Time was the first song Jagger and Richards took to the band to record under their own names. Nanker Phelge was a pseudonym created by Jagger and Richards to publish songs they wrote and recorded but were ashamed to put their real names to. Although Brian Jones was a hapless songwriter, he contributed significantly in the studio. He was a multi-instrumentalist and has been cited by Richards and Jagger in interviews as a large contributor to how songs like Under My Thumb, Paint It Black, and Ruby Tuesday were recorded. Mick Jagger began to attract attention in England and America. His on-stage persona developed from stiff school boy to a dancing, prancing, ambisexual, drunken, shotgun Weimer Republic nightclub singer who either immediately attracted or repulsed viewers. Jagger's development made Richards a stronger guitarist and songwriter.

Along with the Beatles, the Stones revolutionized popular music in the late 1960's. Taking the music and cultural aesthetic they found in African-American Blues, Gospel, Country and Folk, they re-imported the American experience into middle-class homes. Notwithstanding the success of Elvis Presley, or the poetic expression of Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones were the first band to incorporate the various strands of American composition into a universal harmony. The band has recorded through various stages, and have been able to reinterpret current musical styles and contemporary tastes throughout their career, without ever loosing their own unique voice and image. Fans of the band often disagree about which phase of the Stones career represents their best. The enduring quality of their accumulated collection makes it increasingly impossible to simply discount any period.

In addition to his work with the Stones, Richards also has worked heavily as a session guitarist with artists as varied as Gram Parsons, Tom Waits, Bono and Edge of U2, Nona Hendrix, the late John Phillips and Aretha Franklin.

Solo recordings

During the late 1980's, Richards resolved to outlast the fickle Mick Jagger- a man he began to call Brenda in private conversations because Jagger refused to tour with the Rolling Stones- and formed a band called Organized Crime. The band evolved out of work on the Stones poorly received 1986 Dirty Work record and the Taylor Hackford film Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll!. The motion picture was an interesting blend of live concert, back stage documentary, and personality conflict, which celebrated the 60th birthday of Chuck Berry, one of Richard's musical heroes.

The new band, replacing the old name for Keith Richards and the X-pensive Winoes, formed with Steve Jordan, Sarah Dash, Waddy Wachtel and Ivan Neville, recorded with LA funk producer Bernie Worrell during 1987-88 in LA, New York and Montreal. In the fall of 1988 Virgin records released the critically acclaimed, albeit popularly slighted, Talk is Cheap. It spawned a brief but memorable tour through the U.S, playing some classic rooms like the Fox Theatre in Detroit, as well as the Hollywood Palladium on Sunset Strip. In late 1991 Virgin released the concert as Live At the Hollywood Palladium. Richards solo work reignited the Stones. The Steel Wheels album and the group's most successful world tour to date quickly followed Richards solo adventure. Although Talk is Cheap produced no top 40 hits, and went only gold, it has remained a consistent back catalogue seller, and a vivid reminder of how large a contributor Richards has been to the Rolling Stones. In 1992 Main Offender was released and the Winoes and Keith toured further, reaching North and South America as well as Europe. Although the X-Pensive Winoes are often rumoured as being due for a revival, Richard's solo recordings have been fewer than Jaggers', Charlie Watts', and even Ronnie Wood's.

Richard's unique vocal style graced country legend's George Jones the Bradley Barn Sessions (Say it's not You) and the Hank Williams tribute album Timeless (You Win Again) in recent years. The posthomous release in 2001 of John Phillips second solo recording Pay, Pack & Follow ,consisting of tracks recorded between 1973 through 1979, features Keith's magnetic guitar work on all nine tracks, as well as his picture on the cover and CD insert material. In the early 90's Richards recorded a group of Jamaican Rastafarians, The Wingless Angels, on his Jamaican estate. He released the recordings under his own record label, Mindless Records, and in 2004 remastered the recording and re-released it.

Public image and private life

Lamentably, Richards is best known publically for his drug habit and not his songwriting, music or devotion to family. Whose fault this is, is difficult to attribute. Richards and the Stones cultivated a decadent and counter-culture image during the 60's and 70's, and Richard's frank admission that he used narcotics often made him a poster-boy for teens and adults who sought refuge in, as Keith sings, 'booze and pills, and powders'. In a famous 1971 Rolling Stone magazine interview, he openly discussed his drug use, and ten yearts later, in another Rolling Stone magazine interview, he expressed little regret about the heroin habit that almost destroyed his life and music career. To this day he wears a bracelet which resembles a pair of handcuffs, as a reminder he never wishes to be arrested again. Perhaps also appropriate is that he wears a ring sculpted as a human skull (sans jaw).

Two famous busts came ten years apart, one in 1967 with Jagger and friends at Redlands, Richard's country estate, which placed him in custody and trial before the courts of public opinion, as well as her Majesty. Although the convinction was quashed after only two days of imprisonment, Richards famous testimony regarding England's "petty morals" made him a target for establishment backlash. However, there was a more ominous, serious, and life-changing arrest in February 1977 at Toronto's Harbour Castle Hotel. Registered at the hotel under the pseudonym 'Redlands', the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (or Mounties) arrested Richards with substatial quanities of herion and cocaine and charged him with importing narcotics, an offence with a minimum sentence of seven years in prison according to the Criminal Code of Canada. For the next three years he would live under threat of criminal sanction as he sought medical treatment in the U.S. for herion addiction. During this period the Rolling Stones released their biggest selling album ever (8 million copies) Some Girls, which included their last North American Number One pop chart single, Miss You. After the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld Richard's original sentence- the somewhat unorthodox charity concert at an Oshawa hockey arena, a concert attendees well remember as being thick with reefer smoke- Keith emerged healthy and in love with a young New York model.

Patti Hansen was a top fashion model when they met, and also starred in Hard to Hold, a Rick Springfield film in 1982. Richards has been married to Patti Hansen since 1983. They have two children, Theodora and Alexandra. Richards also has a son Marlon, and another daughter, Angela (nee Dandelion), from his relationship with Anita Pallenberg. Richards has never distanced himself from the mother of his first three children, one baby died in infancy. He often refers to having two wives, in the traditional sense of Rastafarian polygamy, although he never officially married Pallenberg, the former girlfriend of Brian Jones, and actress in Performance and Barbarella.

What makes his music special

Richards' guitar style has evolved over the life of the Stones. In the 1960s, greatly influenced by Chuck Berry, he played a traditional - but distinctive - rhythm guitar, in counterpoint to the more flamboyant lead style of Brian Jones. When Jones' drug habit led to his firing from the Stones and his "death by misadventure", Richards was thrust into the role as sole guitarist for the band on the album Let it Bleed. Strongly influenced by the work of Ry Cooder, Keith developed his trademark playing style in the 5-string open G tuning (GDGBD, with the lowest pitched string removed, or as he has it, "5 strings, 3 notes, 2 fingers and one arsehole to play it") during this period. His teaming with the virtuoso Mick Taylor in the years 1968-75 is considered by many the high point of the Stones' musical career. Certainly three albums made in this period, Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers & Exile on Main Street, along with Beggars Banquet (on which Jones only nominally played) represent the musical highpoints of the Stones's recorded canon. Richards himself however has always made clear that he considers the years he has spent playing with Ron Wood (1975 - date), in a style of mixed lead and rhythm playing which has been termed "the ancient art of weaving", as his most musically satisfying. Songs which typify Keith's open-G style include "Honky Tonk Women". Another clear benefit of the 1980's Rolling Stones hiatus is the emergence of Keith's vocal talent. The last two Rolling Stone records, Bridges to Babylon (1997) and Live Licks (2004) feature three Richards lead vocal outings, up from the two every disc since Dirty Work. Richards contributed harmony to every Stones record, and had lead vocals on a track almost every album since Let it Bleed. In fact, Happy, from Exile on Main Street charted as a single in the United States as high as number 22, in 1972. From the country twang of The Worst, to the piano pleadings of Sleep Tonight, and reggae feel of You Don't Have to Mean It Richards has carved himself an original and well received place on all Rolling Stone records.

"Which way to go - I don't know"

What the future will hold for the Rolling Stones and Keith Richards is unpredictable. In 2004, it was announced that Richards would appear in the upcoming sequel to the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean." He will be playing the character of Captain Jack Sparrow's (Johnny Depp's) dad. Depp had previously said he had drew some of his inspiration for his Academy Award-nominated performance from Richards. Musically, the Rolling Stones have a substantial and often well bootlegged collection of unreleased material, many songs feature Richards as lead singer. Famous bootlegs include the Tammy Wynette track Apartment No. 9 recorded in the stranded, passport confiscated months in Toronto after arrest. Only Ian Stewert is there on piano to accompany Keith's emotionally strained, beautifully rendered, country heartache. Needless to say, there will, eventually, be more music to add to the catalogue

Solo discography

• Talk is Cheap (1988)
• Live At the Hollywood Palladium (1991)
• Main Offender (1992)

Rolling Stones discography

• England's Newest Hitmakers (1964)
• 12X5 (1964)
• The Rolling Stones, Now !(1965)
• Out Of Our Heads (1965)
• December's Children (and Everybody's) (1966)
• Aftermath (1966)
• Got it LIVE if You Want It! (1966)
• Between The Buttons (1967)
• Flowers (1967)
• Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967)
• Beggars Banquet (1968)
• Through the Past Darkly (1968) (Compilation)
• Let It Bleed (1969)
• Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out ! (1970)
• Hot Rocks 1964-1971 (1971) (Compilation)
• More Hot Rocks (1971)(Compilation)
• Sticky Fingers (1971)
• Exile On Main Street (1972)
• Goats Head Soup (1973)
• It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (1974)
• Made in the Shade (1975) (out of print hits compilation)
• Metamorphis (1975) (Unreleased tracks from Decca back catalogue)
• Black And Blue (1976)
• Love You Live (1977)
• Some Girls (1978)
• Emotional Rescue (1980)
• Sucking in the Seventies (1981)(2 unreleased tracks) (out of print)
• Tattoo You (1981)
• Still Live (1982)
• Undercover (1983)
• Rewind 1971-1983 (1984) (Compilation (out of print)
• Dirty Work (1986)
• Steel Wheels (1989)
• The London Years: Singles (Compilation of Decca singles)
• Flashpoint (1991)
• Jump Back - The Best of The Rolling Stones 1971-1993 (1993)
• Voodoo Lounge (1994)
• Stripped (1996)
• Bridges To Babylon (1997)
• No Security (1998)
• Forty Licks (2002)
• Live Licks (2004)

Notable contributions

• Wingless Angels (1993) Produced Reggae band
• Pay, Pack & Follow (2001) John Phillips solo record
• Bradley Barn Sessions (1993) George Jones Duet
• Timeless: Tribute to Hank Williams (2001)
• Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll (1987) Soundtrack to Chuck Berry film
• Jumping Jack Flash (1986) Aretha Franklin soundtrack
• Sun City, Artists United Against Apartheid (1985) "Silver and Gold" with Bono and Edge of U2
• Run Rudolph Run (1979) Christmas single

External links

• The Official Keith Richards Site
• The Nets Biggest Keith Richards Resource

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