Keith Richards Recalls Meeting Merle Haggard for the First Time: “I Almost Lost It”

Merle Haggard is an undisputed country icon. He wrote and recorded some of the genre’s most iconic songs. Maybe more importantly, he helped popularize the Bakersfield Sound pioneered by artists like Buck Owens and inspired countless country artists by doing so. However, the mark he made on the world transcends genres and even iconic rockers like Keith Richards were in awe of his talent.

Richards first heard Haggard’s music through his late friend and alt-country luminary Gram Parsons. “Gram had hung with Merle while in Bakersfield, and Gram came back saying, ‘This cat’s really special.’ In the couple of years that I knew Gram, I got a severe education in country music,” Richards told Rolling Stone shortly after Haggard’s death in 2016. “Gram explained a lot about Merle and the difference between Bakersfield and Nashville country. Nashville was that over-the-top production with the Anita Kerr singers, the orchestral stuff… Bakersfield—that was barroom music, hard music,” he added.

[RELATED: Keith Richards Performs “Sing Me Back Home” at Merle Haggard Tribute Concert]

Keith Richards Meets Merle Haggard

Keith Richards recalled meeting Merle Haggard for the first time in a video on his YouTube channel. “The first time I met him, I was sitting on a drum riser. Jerry Lee Lewis was rehearsing. We’re going through ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ and Jerry’s pumping the sh-t,” he recalled of the rehearsal for a television special.

 “I turn ‘round to my right and there’s this other cat sitting next to me. He’s wearing one of those straw Stetsons and a grizzled beard and he looks at me and gives me a grin and I give him a grin. I get through two more bars of the song and I suddenly realize it’s Merle Haggard. I almost lost it there,” he said, meaning that he almost couldn’t finish playing the song. “I’m sitting next to one of the greats. He turns ‘round and gives me a nod and we carry on. I managed to get through the song.”

He summed up the meeting saying, “To meet one of your favorites, one of your heroes, a guy you’ve always admired and you meet him sitting on the next side of the drum riser. Yeah, man, that is the sh-t.”

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