Book Excerpt: Keith Richards On Keith Richards

Chris: So how did the group come about?

Keith: Well, there wasn’t really a group first. We all sort of met at Alexis Korner’s club, you know. Brian knew Alexis and he’d played in a couple of bands in Cheltenham, whereas I’d only done the odd dances and a country band at art school and a couple of rock ’n’ roll gigs for fun. Brian was more into “A gig—we can get fifty bob for this.” Get a guest slot down the Red Lion or something like that. He knew a little bit more about the musician scene in London. Stu was the first guy I saw when I went to the first rehearsal of what turned out to be the Stones. He was just sitting there at the piano. Mick and I had done a couple of numbers with Alexis. It was good experience and we got off on it. And then Alexis had offered Mick a couple of gigs to come and sing at some of these deb jobs he was doing.

Chris: Yeah?

Keith: Yeah, ’cause he saw a certain amount of commercial appeal to use Mick for four or five numbers to give it a bit more variety, I guess.

Chris: Another thing I noticed on that old Ed Sullivan clip was that Mick was just standing there singing—nothing like what you see these days!

Keith: To me, as long as we’ve known each other, I’ve always thought Mick’s most brilliant thing was that he could work in an area two foot square and give a very exciting performance. I keep saying to him, “Don’t worry about it, save your breath, you don’t have to look upon it as an athletic stunt anymore. Just stand there and sing.”

Chris: Do you still enjoy playing live?

Keith: Yeah. There’s no substitute for live work to keep a band together.

Chris: Yes, almost every other band from that era has faded away. It’s almost as if you’d all consciously made a kind of pact with each other to keep it together. You’re getting to be like an institution.

Keith: Yes, I find it very interesting to still be together after all this time, and in a way it’s put us in this unique position. Since nobody else has got this far with it as a band, let’s see if we can take this English rock ’n’ roll fab group/mania sort of thing it started as and see if we can make it grow up with us. Without having to get hung up on the Peter Pan aspect of it.

Chris: Well, rock came about as a sort of musical expression of the postwar baby-boom generation and it was originally an adolescent thing you were expected to grow out of. There were no rock musicians over twenty-five and the idea of still doing it when you’re forty . . . and yet look at guys like Muddy Waters.

Keith: Muddy is the example I always use when talking about this. He commanded all the respect in the world and did it in a mature and graceful way. So it’s really up to you. None of the great ones ever sort of…stop.