15 Pieces of Life Advice From Keith Richards
A face as wrinkled as that of a centuries-old turtle, a carelessly elegant way of expressing himself and a casual style of guitar playing: that's Keith Richards. The body and soul of the Rolling Stones, but also an old man who's been around the block. Here's some remarkable wisdom drawn from his life.
1. What music actually means to people remains one of the great mysteries of humankind.
2. Some people want to play the guitar, others are looking for a sound. I was looking for a sound. When playing guitar, I always found I wanted to play something that should be played on a completely different instrument. I've often tried to transfer things like brass band parts to my guitar.
3. I wrote "Satisfaction" in my sleep. I had no idea I had recorded it and I have a small Philips tape recorder to thank for it. I looked at the tape in the morning and found it was at the end. So I rewound it, played it, and there was "Satisfaction." The bare acoustic skeleton of the song... plus forty minutes of me snoring.
4. Open tuning on five strings changed my life. The top E was just getting in the way anyway, so I figured I didn't need it. It was never in tune anyway, and it got in the way of what I was trying to do. So I just took it off and retuned my guitar, my fingers, and my mind as well. Five strings cleared out the useless junk.
5. Five strings, three notes, two fingers, and one asshole! That's all you need to play! What you do with it is another matter.
6. I'm a guitar master, but I've never entered a contest. I forgot to fill out the application.
7. Music can't be stopped. It's the most subversive thing of all. You can build a wall to keep people at bay, but music will still break through. Eventually, even the Iron Curtain was torn down by rock 'n' roll and jeans. It wasn't nuclear weapons and intimidation and all that crap. That wall was shattered by ordinary music, man.
8. I make up songs by sitting down, playing twenty-five beautiful songs by other people and hoping that eventually one of my own will come out.
9. Rock 'n' roll looks very simple on paper, but there's a lot of variety, and the most important things are time and phrasing. It's instinct, there's really no sophisticated strategy behind it, there's no genius brain driving it. And that's what it is!
10. Art is the last thing I care about when writing songs. I don't think it matters at all. If you want to call it art, fine, call it whatever you want. But for me, Art is just short for Arthur.
11. In really big stadiums, you never know what sound you're going to end up with. So we rely on God, who joins the band every night in one way or another. Sometimes he's kind and sometimes he makes the wind blow in the wrong direction. That's when the best Stones sound gets to people three miles away, where they don't want it at all.
12. Groupies were like family to us, there was no jealousy or possessiveness. A loosely knit network. The girls just handed us over to their closest friends along the tour route and they took care of us like Red Cross nurses. They washed our clothes, gave us a bath and everything. And we were just like: Why on earth is she doing this for some guitar player? There are millions of those after all.
13. In 1973, New Musical Express identified the ten rock stars most at risk of dying, and I was number one. I was number one on that list for ten years. It was the only list where I was number one for that long, and I was a little proud of it. I was disappointed when I started to slip and eventually dropped to ninth place.
14. When something broke on your guitar in the old days, you simply picked yourself up, left the stage, and the others played on while you sorted it out. Nowadays, film keeps everything under close scrutiny—there's cameras everywhere. So the technician has to be ready to not only replace a broken string, but have another guitar with the same tuning and sound ready to throw around your neck within ten seconds.
15. I have an incredible immune system. I recovered from severe Hepatitis C without bothering to do anything about it. I'm a rare specimen.
Bono Vox, lead singer of the Irish band U2, once said of Keith: "Many people get lost in the back alleys and back streets to rock 'n' roll, but Keith is almost always on the main road. He's still in love with the music. Fame and millions don't do much for him. As soon as he picks up the guitar, all the wrinkles disappear from his face."
What do you think of Keith? Is your favorite Richards quote missing from our list? Share it with us in the comments.
If you have found an error or typo in the article, please let us know by e-mail info@insounder.org.
