On the 50th anniversary of the first performance by the Rolling Stones, we present this feature on Keith Richards, which ran in the April 1993 issue of Relix. The cover image below is from our September/October 2010 issue.

As the fall of 1988 came around, all was not well in Rolling Stoneland. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, like many good friends and many more business associates, had shared a rocky relationship at times. However, their most recent barrages seemed to spell the end for “The World’s Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band.” Keith was angry at Mick because he refused to tour with the Rolling Stones in support of their 1986 Dirty Work album. Mick had chosen instead to record an album of his own and to tour solo to support it.

Differences of opinion in rock’n’roll bands have occurred before. At different times, Bob Weir and Mickey Hart each left the Grateful Dead. Spats between Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend have been documented (at times, resembling classic Ali-Frazier bouts). Stories about the Kinks’ Davies brothers’ onstage fisticuffs have become legendary. All of those bands, however, had weathered their tempests and were still working together even as the Rolling Stones feud reached fever pitch.

The rift between Keith and Mick took on great drama, publicly and privately. Certainly the Stones had walked a rocky road in the past. This time it appeared that rock fans might have to face the music without the band that had long shown the world how. On October 4, 1988, Keith Richards’ first solo album, Talk is Cheap, was released. The riff doctor lived! With the release of his first solo album, Keith proved what those in the know had been saying for a long time; Mick Jagger might be the most visible of the Rolling Stones, but the roll behind their rock still burst from the guitar of Keith Richards. Talk is Cheap received kudos from the critics and took the radio airwaves in the United States by storm. Keith was pleased with his album, but not at the circumstances under which he recorded.

He said, “I was never interested in making a solo record while the Stones were still going as a concern. When they weren’t, then the slight sense of failure came in because I had to admit that I hadn’t managed to keep the band together, which I always figured I could, because I got a big head. I figured no matter what problems, one way or another, I would keep those guys together.”

People close to the situation claimed that the brush with the band’s death very nearly broke Keith’s heart. As much as he had been the soul of the Stones from its inception, the group had been a part of him as well. His relationship with Mick Jagger goes back to primary school. They lived only two blocks apart. Keith moved and attended a different school from Mick, but as teens they crossed paths again while waiting for a London-bound train. Mick carried copies of The Best Of Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry’s Rockin’ at the Hops. Mick impressed Keith with his musical choices and the two renewed their friendship. Over a pot of tea that afternoon, they decided to make music together. Keith joined Mick in Little Boy Blue And The Blue Boys, a group which included Dick Taylor (founder of the Pretty Things), who was a chum of Keith’s from Sidcup Art College.

Like many of his contemporaries (John Lennon, Ray Davies, David Bowie, Ron Wood, Pete Townshend), Keith found a temporary refuge in art school. American blues and jazz, the Beats, abstract art, Brigitte Bardot and speed pills were all the rage; just the right combo for a young, working class English lad looking for something more. Mostly, he found that something in the music of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Muddy Waters and the other giants of US blues and rock’n’roll. Even as the Blue Boys evolved into the Stones and began their meteoric rise (four US Top 40 hit within two years of forming, three number one hits in the next 18 months) Keith never forgot his debt to the Chicago Bluesmen.

He says, “[They are] where I started to learn it all as I was growing up. When I first met Muddy Waters, he was painting the ceiling of Chess Studios. We’re walking in there to make the second record or the third in Chicago and [someone said], ‘Thought you might like to meet this guy, that’s Muddy Waters, you know.’ There’s this black face covered in drops of white paint. All those guys, John Lee [Hooker], who I worked with last year, and Howlin’ Wolf and Johnny Johnson, these guys- it’s like when I meet them they always feel like they’re my dads. You know, they’re welcoming home some errant unexpected son and that’s the way they treat me. I learned a lot from those guys. If you’re sure of what you’re doing, you know you’re pretty good and you’re going to do it, then you don’t need to carve other people up. You don’t need to be cheap. I mean, music is something one generation passes on to another and if you love it enough and you cherish it enough, to get the nod from the guys that took it from is like I said, ‘I must have done something right.’”

Keith still gives credit where credit is due on albums and consistently mentions his mentors in interviews and private conversations. That’s a long-held tradition. In May of 1965, American teens tuning in to a favorite television dance party program may have been baffled by the appearance of a giant black man in the Rolling Stones’ midst, but according to Keith, the band knew exactly what they were doing. “I was well aware of that. I mean Jack Goode did that Shindig thing. That was breaking ground to bring somebody like Howlin’ Wolf on a show like that. It’s like picking up the torch and giving something back. It’s our way of being able to start to pay back the stuff that we learned from them, from their records, from their music and being able to give them exposure, and hell, we did the job. Soon after [the Stones began singing the praises], Muddy started to record his greatest period, as far a selling records is concerned, from then on. So it’s all a matter of reciprocation.” He adds, “All the blues guys, all the greats, were always such gentlemen.”

Over the years, the Rolling Stones earned the title of greatness, but their status as gentlemen occasionally came into question. It was their taste for pharmaceuticals and other substances which brought them the most grief. The court logs and newspaper police reports from several countries hold the names of various Stones. The saddest chapter of the early days came on July 3, 1969, when Rolling Stones co-founder, Brian Jones- already fired from the band for his erratic behavior- badly addled on drugs, drowned in his swimming pool. Keith still has a great deal of respect for Brian. “Brian was one of those guys who could walk into the studio and pick up an instrument he had never played before, like the marimbas in ‘Under My Thumb’ or the star in ‘Paint It Black.’ He’s remembered every time we play. ‘Time Is On My Side” ….the whole basic idea of the sound of the Stones. That’s why were still talking about him. Dead but not forgotten."

Brian’s death and the ensuring publicity did nothing to improve the Stones’ standing in the eyes of their fans’ parents. Their reputation as the bad boys of rock had originally been fabricated by manager Andrew ( “Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?” ) Loog Oldham to contrast them with the “squeaky clean” Beatles. That reputation had come to haunt the. Of course, their behavior did nothing to reverse the verdict. The worst hounding came at home. Somehow seen as a threat to the British Crown, they were harassed for years. Eventually the hassles, along with a punitive tax rate, drove them from England in the midst of their most brilliant period, which Keith identifies as: “That whole period around Beggar’s Banquet and through to Exile [On Main Street]. I tend to think now that roll would have kept going. There was no reason why it shouldn’t have. But suddenly, in order to keep the band together, we had to leave England and so, instead of being able to go around the corner, ‘Hey Mick, I’ve got a good riff. Why don’t you come over or I’ll pop over to you or….’ I mean that physical proximity thing which is necessary, for the rest of the 70’s after Exile, we were kind of forced to learn how to live, you know, with everybody separated all over the world. [We had to learn] how to write songs, how to put records together, how to work in a totally new and incredibly large environment, where before, it was always a bunch of guys around the corner. I mean, actually what it did, it actually you more determined to keep it together. ‘They think by kicking us out they can get rid of us…Screw you!’ You know?”

Over the next decade-and-a-half, the Stones continued to maintain that attitude and continued professionally and musically to have their ups, like 1978’s Some Girls, and downs, most notably the December 12, 1985 death of Ian Stewart, who had been with the band from the beginning. Keith remembers him this way: “Well, we’re still working for him. It’s his band really. The first time I went to rehearsal of what turned out to be the Rolling Stones, I walked into this little room on top of a pub in London and it had a piano in it and a horsehair couch sort of burst wide open. The only guy there was Stu and I walked in. He said [gruffly], ‘Who are you?’ I said [meekly], ‘I’m the guitar player…maybe.’ So Stu was a very big part of the band. When we got to record they said, ‘We can’t use him, he doesn’t look right and there’s too many of you.’ And stu, a large man, a large heart- he was a guy: ‘Yeah, I understand. Okay, I’ll drive the bus.’ And he roadied for us. But he still recorded, and in every other respect, was part of the band. Eventually he got back on stage with us anyway.” Through the roller coaster ride, the Stones became as large as their legend and perhaps lost some of their drive in the bargain.

The release of Talk is Cheap, renewed the hope of the faithful. Keith Richards proved that the true feel that captured the hearts and ears of Rolling Stones fans at the very beginning was still alive. He had found a new band, the X-pensive Winos (Waddy Wachtel, Steve Jordan, Ivan Neville, Charlie Drayton, Sarah Dash and Bobby Keys), of which he says: “What makes it fun for me is the fact that I’m playing with such great guys. Actually, to have one great band is a miracle. To have two, hey ‘What did I do right?’ It allows me to do things on a scale that the Stones are so far over the top.” These Winos drive him pretty hard. “I suppose to me the difference between working with the Winos as opposed to the Stones is that musically, let’s say in the studio when I’m putting a song together and we’re working on it, if I stop, the Stones just stop because it’s a habit,” Richards continues. “They’ll wait for me to knock the thing into shape. In the studio with the Winos, if I stop they don’t. They just keep going and look at me. It’s like ‘Pick it up man, pick it up!’ Which is great because nobody kicks me, and I say, ‘Even the kicker needs to be kicked occasionally.’ You know, ‘Oh , that hurt. It felt good.’”

After a Wino tour and live album and video ( Keith Richards and the X-Pensive Winos at the Hollywood Palladium ), a Stones album ( Steel Wheels ), world tour, live album ( Flashpoint ), and IMAX concert film, Keith has picked up right where he left off with his latest album, Main Offender. He and the Winos have struck the right chord again, combining rock, R&B, blues and reggae in their own unique blend, and touring to critical raves. As Keith says, “I found out on the road that the Winos, apart from Burning Spear, are probably one of the best live reggae bands in the world. If they wanted to play it all the time, they could.”

A founding father of the Stones he may be, but Keith’s real life role as a doting dad is one seldom seen by public eyes. At a rehearsal for the Winos tour, his youngest two ran into the hall with cries of, “Daddy! Daddy!” and hugged Daddy’s neck (which they shared with his guitar). Later, when six-year-old Alexandra hurt her thumb, Keith, in the tradition of all parents pained by their children’s hurts, came off the stage, still wearing his wireless guitar, to kiss away the pain. Alexandra continued to sob. As he turned back to the stage, Keith said, with the perfect comic timing, “It’ll take a minute for that to sink in.” Then, sensing a smile lurking in the shallows beneath the tears he spun back and said, “And another thing…” ripping off one of his patented blues guitar riffs which was then echoed by Alexandra’s musical laughter. Main offender indeed.