biography KEITH RICHARDS

Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943) is an English guitarist, songwriter, singer, producer and a founding member of The Rolling Stones. As a guitarist, Richards is mostly known for his innovative rhythm playing. In 2003 Richards was ranked 10th on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 greatest guitarists of all time".^[1]

With songwriting partner and Rolling Stones lead vocalist Mick Jagger, Richards has written and recorded hundreds of songs, fourteen of which Rolling Stone magazine lists among the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time

Early life

Keith Richards, the only child of Bert Richards and Doris Dupree Richards, was born in Dartford, Kent. He is of Welsh and French Hugenot ancestry. His father was a factory labourer who was slightly injured during World War II.

Richards's paternal grandparents were socialists and civic leaders.^[3] His maternal grandfather (Augustus Theodore Dupree), who toured Britain in a jazz big band called Gus Dupree and his Boys, was an early influence on Richards's musical ambitions and got him interested in playing guitar.^[4]

Richards's mother introduced him to the music of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and bought him his first guitar — a Rosetti acoustic — for seven pounds.^[5] His father was less encouraging: "Every time the poor guy came in at night," Richards says, "he'd find me sitting at the top of the stairs with my guitar, playing and banging on the wall for percussion. He was great about it really. He'd only mutter, 'Stop that bloody noise.'"^[6] Richards' first guitar hero was Scotty Moore.

Richards attended Wentworth Primary School, as did Mick Jagger; the two knew each other as schoolboys, and lived in the same neighbourhood until Richards's family moved to another section of Dartford in 1954.^[7] From 1955 to 1959 Richards attended Dartford Technical School (now named Wilmington Grammar School),^[8][9] where choirmaster Jake Clair noticed his singing voice and recruited him into the school choir. As one of a trio of boy sopranos Richards sang (among other performances) at Westminster Abbey in front of Queen Elizabeth II - an experience that he has called his "first taste of show biz."^[10]

In 1959, Richards was expelled from Dartford Technical School for truancy, and the headmaster suggested he would be more at home at the art college in the neighboring town of Sidcup.^[11] At Sidcup Art College Richards devoted his time to playing guitar after he heard American blues artists like Little Walter and Big Bill Broonzy. He swapped a pile of records for his first electric guitar,^[12] a hollow-body Höfner cutaway. Fellow Sidcup student and future musical colleague Dick Taylor recalls, "There was a lot of music being played at Sidcup, and we'd go into the empty classrooms and fool around with our guitars. ... Even in those days Keith could play most of [Chuck Berry's] solos."^[13] Taylor also remembers Richards experimenting with various drugs at Sidcup: "In order to stay up late with our music and still get to Sidcup in the morning, Keith and I were on a pretty steady diet of pep pills, which not only kept us awake but gave us a lift. We took all kinds of things - pills that girls took for menstruation; inhalers like Nostrilene, and other stuff. Opposite the college there was this little park with an aviary that had a cockatoo in it. Cocky the Cockatoo we used to call it. Keith used to feed it pep pills and make it stagger around on its perch. If ever we were feeling bored we'd go and give another upper to Cocky."^[14]

One morning in 1961, on the train journey from Dartford to Sidcup, Richards happened to get into the same carriage as Mick Jagger, who was then a student at the London School of Economics.^[15] They recognized each other and began talking about the LPs Jagger had with him -- blues and rhythm & blues albums he had acquired by mail-order from America. Richards was surprised and impressed that Jagger not only shared his enthusiasm for Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, but also that he owned such LPs which were extremely rare in Britain at the time. The two discovered that they had a mutual friend in Dick Taylor, with whom Jagger was singing in an amateur band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. Jagger invited Richards to a rehearsal and soon after Richards also joined the line-up. The group disbanded after Jagger, Richards, and Taylor met Brian Jones and Ian Stewart, with whom they went on to form The Rolling Stones (Taylor left the band in November 1962 to return to art school).

By mid-1962 Richards had left Sidcup Art College in favour of pursuing his fledgling musical career and moved into a London flat with Jagger and Jones. His parents divorced about the same time. Richards maintained close ties with his mother, who was very supportive of his musical activities, but he became estranged from his father and didn't resume contact with him until 1982.

In 1963 Richards dropped the "s" from his name and used the professional name "Keith Richard", which Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham considered more suitable as a show business name.

Guitar playing

Richards has derived inspiration from Chuck Berry throughout his career. Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys rehearsed many Berry numbers,^[16] and Jagger and Richards were largely responsible for bringing Berry and Bo Diddley covers into The Rolling Stones' early repertoire. Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters records were another early source of inspiration, and the basis for the style of interwoven lead and rhythm guitar that Richards developed with founding Rolling Stones member Brian Jones.^[17] When Jones was replaced by guitarist Mick Taylor, who worked with The Rolling Stones from 1969 to 1974, Taylor's playing style led to a more pronounced separation between the lead and rhythm guitar roles. In 1975 Taylor was replaced by Ronnie Wood, marking a return to the style of guitar interplay that he and Richards call "the ancient art of weaving".^[18] Richards has said the years with Wood have been his most musically satisfying period in the Rolling Stones.^{[citation needed]}

Richards often uses guitars with open tunings which allow for syncopated and ringing I-IV chording that can be heard on "Street Fighting Man" and "Start Me Up". He particularly favours a five-string variant of open G tuning (borrowed from Don Everly of the Everly Brothers), using GDGBD unencumbered by a droning low 6th string;^[19] this tuning is prominent on numerous Rolling Stones tracks, including "Honky Tonk Women," "Brown Sugar" and "Start Me Up". Though he still uses standard tunings, Richards has said that his adoption of open tunings in the late 1960s led to a musical "rebirth". In that same time period, Brian Jones's declining contributions left Richards to record all the guitar parts on many tracks, including slide guitar, which had been Jones's specialty in the early years. Richards has rarely played slide in the years since Taylor and then Wood — both accomplished slide players — joined The Rolling Stones.

Richards — who owns over 1000 guitars, some of which he has not played but was simply given — is often associated with the Fender Telecaster, particularly with two 1950s Telecasters outfitted with Gibson PAF humbucker pickups in the neck position.^[20] Also notable was the 1959 Bigsby-equipped sunburst Les Paul that he acquired in 1964, which was the first "star owned" Les Paul in Britain.^[21][22] Since 1997 a Bigsby-equipped ebony Gibson ES-355 has served as one of his main stage guitars.^[23][24] Even though Richards has used many different guitar models, in a 1986 Guitar World interview he joked that no matter what model he plays, "give me five minutes and I'll make 'em all sound the same."^[25]

In 1965 Richards used a Gibson Maestro fuzzbox to achieve the distinctive tone of his riff on "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction";^[26] the success of the resulting single boosted the sales of the device to the extent that all available stock had sold out by the end of 1965.^[27] In the 1970s and early 1980s Richards frequently used guitar effects such as a wah-wah pedal, a phaser and a Leslie speaker,^[28] but he mainly relies on combining "the right amp with the right guitar" to achieve the sound he wants.^[29]

Richards considers acoustic guitar to be the basis for his playing,^[30] and has said: "Every guitar player should play acoustic at home. No matter what else you do, if you don't keep up your acoustic work, you're never going to get the full potential out of an electric, because you lose that touch."^[19] Richards's acoustic guitar is featured on tracks throughout the Rolling Stones' career, including hits like "Not Fade Away", "Brown Sugar", "Beast of Burden" and "Almost Hear You Sigh". All the guitars on the studio version of "Street Fighting Man" are Richards on acoustic, distorted by overloading a small cassette recorder microphone, a technique also used on "Jumping Jack Flash".

Songwriting

Richards and Jagger began writing songs together in 1963, following the example of the Beatles' Lennon/McCartney and the encouragement of Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who saw little future for a cover band.^[45] The earliest Jagger/Richards collaborations were recorded by other artists, including Gene Pitney, whose rendition of "That Girl Belongs to Yesterday" was their first top-ten single in the UK.^[46] Richards recalls: "We were writing these terrible pop songs that were becoming Top 10 hits. ... They had nothing to do with us, except we wrote 'em."^[47]

The Rolling Stones' first top-ten hit with a Jagger/Richards original was "The Last Time" (1965);^[48] "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (also 1965) was their first international #1 recording. (Richards has stated that the "Satisfaction" riff came to him in his sleep; he woke up just long enough to record it on a cassette player by his bed.)^[49] Since Aftermath (1966) most Rolling Stones albums have consisted mainly of Jagger/Richards originals. Their songs reflect the influence of blues, R&B, rock & roll, pop, soul, gospel and country, as well as forays into psychedelia and Dylanesque social commentary. Their work in the 1970s and beyond has incorporated elements of funk, disco, reggae and punk.^[47] Richards has also written and recorded slow torchy ballads, such as "All About You" (1980).

In his solo career, Richards has often shared co-writing credits with drummer and co-producer Steve Jordan. Richards has said: "I've always thought songs written by two people are better than those written by one. You get another angle on it."^[47]

Richards has frequently stated that he feels less like a creator than a conduit when writing songs: "I don't have that God aspect about it. I prefer to think of myself as an antenna. There's only one song, and Adam and Eve wrote it; the rest is a variation on a theme."^[47]

Richards was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1993.^[50]

About half of Richards' songwriting copyrights are filed under "Keith Richard" (with no "s" on it), so some care is required when searching for them.