In 1973, Keith Richards proclaimed that there’s some people you look at and know they aren’t gonna make it to thirty. He was talking about former bandmate Brian Jones, yet the look in his eyes translated the fear of the sentiment being double-barrelled. Well, not only did Keith beat his own expectation of not making it to 70, but today marks his 80th birthday.
It’s been one of the longest running jokes in the music industry that Keith may just be immortal. He’s cheated death in extraordinary ways many times: only being saved from electrocution in 1965 because of the rubber soles of his shoes, being one of the only people to survive the injection of strychnine into the body, surviving multiple house fires, falling from a coconut tree and getting brain surgery in his late 60s, it’s become part of this huge legend around him. As interesting as his certifiable survival in the face of any adversity is it’s overtaken just how many great things he’s accomplished in these past 80 years.
When The Rolling Stones burst onto the scene in the early 1960s they were the second most popular band of the British Invasion, behind only The Beatles. He was one of the many men with an identifiable british accent and a bowlcut that drove women wild but he was the one that acknowledged how cool he thought it was to unlock a part of girls that helped them understand that they were so much more that what the world was offering them. He’s spoken a few times about how he believes the arrival of these bands gave women the ability to feel they had something, but that they would’ve found it somewhere else - his music just happened to be the outlet. He was the only man of this movement that seemed to deeply acknowledge the important and revolutionary impact of the music he was creating in relation to the feminist movement brewing within the youth culture of America. He doesn’t speak of the fame he was brought, the mobbing, or even the unique place the music was holding in inspiring what would become important for decades to come. No, it’s about the women who were given a fraction of self worth and power due to something he had a hand in.
“Some of the songs opened their hearts a little, or their minds, to the idea that women are strong. It became obvious when playing to them, the awesome power you’ve unleashed.” - Keith Richards, 2011
In 1967, Keith began dating actress, model, all around accomplished badass Anita Pallenberg. He would attend every single one of her movie premieres as nothing more than her plus one, and took on her revolutionary style. It was during his time with Pallenberg he would begin to dress in his now instantly identifiable and infamous androgynous manner. He would begin his experiments with patterns, fabrics, jewelry, and makeup - things that would become synonymous with the rockstar look. His wolfcut, the sailor-esque styling of just about everything he wore, the extensive drip of gems is still emulated today, even the skull imagery so closely associated with rock and roll draws a home back to Keith. During his infamous 1967 drug bust he would argue back and forth with the judge over not his conviction or jail time, not even about whether he was guilty or not. He took more issue with the misogyny being leveled against Mick Jaggers’ then-girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, who was taking a bath in his home when the bust took place. The judge questioned how she could feel so comfortable as to bathe in the home of a man, a question Keith responded to by asking why exactly men feel women have to be uncomfortable around them, why it was expected that a man should use his societal leverage to make women feel unsafe? While Jagger would engage the press in a cordial back and forth about the rights of self, it was Keith who fought back on the angle of feminism in a moment where that was only making his case worse. He did everything in his power to ignite a pushback against the press that were being horrible toward his friend, even if his work would ultimately not turn the tide.
The following decade would cast Keith as the punching bag of rock and roll. His addiction issues were made the public’s favorite excuse to why rock stars were modern day hedonists. No matter what anyone else was doing, it was assumed that Keith was doing it worse, uglier, and more extreme. It's jarring to see how people would speak of a human person during a time of their own personal weaknesses. Papers alleging he tried to light a room with his children on fire, journalists telling him to his face they expect him to die within the year [though that was said in 1973, so clearly they were wrong], tabloids focusing on looks and insecurities. Every person in the public eye expects to be criticized, but it was disproportionate towards Keith. He said in a 1988 interview that he had no choice of his issues ever just being his to deal with, they became everyone else's problem for some unbeknownst reason. He was worked up to be this idealized rock star, everything he did under a microscope, the common man's look into the world of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. While seeing a man at his lowest, barely able to stand on stage or convincingly sing the lines of a song he’d sang one hundred times should be a major flag to the public that someone is struggling behind the scenes it was pointed and laughed at, echoes of ‘glad that isn’t me’ interlaced with those of ‘he let himself go.’ Keith would say, decades later, that drugs were his crutch when he didn’t know how to deal with the demands of fame. He didn’t want to perform, have his picture taken, or do a single thing other than write his music, that his shyness prevented him from being able to grapple with the level of fame The Stones gained during the 1970s. He would say he wanted to get clean for his kids, the band, his family, but the trappings of addiction prevented him from doing so until his fifth, and final, drug bust in 1977.
Keith was arrested in Toronto and narrowly escaped a seven year prison sentence… because of his kindness. Before the trial a blind Stones fan would go to the judge presiding over the case and explain to him the kind of person Keith really was. She would explain how once he heard she was hitchhiking to their shows he would arrange for transportation, buy her a hotel room, making sure she was fed and taken care of during the stay, and that even if the story did nothing for the judge's opinion on the case that he knew Keith was a good person beneath his issues. It’s also worth noting that Keith had no idea that the fan would go to the judge before his trial, that he didn’t do all the things he did for her for publicity, and that he was the only member of the Stones to do what he did for the fan. His sentence would be that he do a free benefit concert for the blind, which he did. He got clean after this arrest, and changed his life for the better. This wouldn’t affect the press's treatment of him, though. I think a lot of his abuse from the press comes from his silence over the misinformation, it getting twisted into complicity. That’s why his joke of getting a blood transfusion every few years has become such a widely circulated [though clearly false] story.
Over his past six decades of music Keith Richards has proved to be one of the greatest composers to ever write for popular music. He’s dipped into every genre in the echelon of popular music, writing a standard for each one. Before the market was polluted with self-centered heartbreak and revenge plots by selfish people and their ghost writers, a pop song used to be a guilty pleasure enjoyed by the masses. Oftentimes it was intended to turn-off your brain, until Keith Richards. When he wanted to write a pop song, he would scribe the likes Ruby Tuesday, As Tears Go By. Songs he was embarrassed to have written, and originally ashamed to record. Songs that have gone on to be dissected and loved 60 years later for their mold breaking lyrics and delicate sensitivity shown by their composer. He wrote Gimme Shelter alone during a storm about his heartbreak, Angie when he was in rehab with nothing but his guitar, and Satisfaction in his sleep. He wrote the classic Wild Horses for his newborn son - intending it as a lullaby though Jagger would change it to be about his relationship - and She’s A Rainbow about his newfound love with Pallenberg in 1967. Sticky Fingers was such a landmark record in 1971 because of Keith and his guitar work - an album he neglected to show up to record for half the time and in which he’s missing from one of the ten songs, and Exile on Main Street? The Stones magnum opus? That was recorded in Keith’s basement in France when no one liked it but him. Some Girls is the biggest album the band has released, an album made iconic because of Keith-lead compositions like Beast of Burden and his stellar guitar and bass work on the songs. To talk about the sheer volume of his contributions to not only the Stones music but to the art form as a whole is another beast entirely, but to neglect his impact on what he loves the most would be a disservice to him.
Keith is the driving force behind the sound, success, and emotion that makes The Stones music what it is. Without him, the band would have never gotten as far as it has. People may compare that sentiment to The Beatles, how without one the band could’ve never survived and thrived how it did, but call this into consideration: The Beatles were a four-headed monster, and Keith is just Keith. For The Beatles to get as far as they did it took 4 of them, for The Stones it took all of them, of course, but Keith trudged ahead so far they're music could never have really ever existed without his ideas and intuition, no matter how other great musicians came together to help. Jagger has stated that Keith, at all times, has about 300 songs in his head ready to be recorded in minutes. Wild Horses came about because of this, he simply asked Keith to play a song he had in his head and out came one of the most beautiful pieces to be written for modern music. That and, of course, the fact that he himself is so important that Mick Jagger knows he can’t carry a band without him. Well, "knows" and “had to learn the hard way” are interchangeable here, a simple look towards the solo career Jagger couldn’t uphold because no one wants to see him and the one Keith could because... well... he's Keith.
There’s thousands of stories about Keith Richards that make him a man as special as he is. For every one about his days of excess and partying, there's three about him being a genuinely nice guy to those around him. Those stories don’t get as much traction, but I don’t think he wants them to. The Stones 1994 Voodoo Lounge album got its name from a stray kitten Keith saved during a storm during the recording of the album, yet every time he was asked about the album title he would joke about black magic. There are countless stories from women around the band talking about how respectful and kind Keith was to them both during and after their involvement in the band’s circle, his almost maternal need to babysit everyone's kids, or how he would be gifted pets from fans who had seen him help strays. In Jo Wood’s 2013 memoir she wrote: “I’ve been lucky enough to meet some legends in my time - Bob Marley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Clinton, Muhammed Ali, Madonna, Chuck Berry, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and, yes, of course, Mick Jagger, but Keith is the most extraordinary person.”
Keith didn’t aim to reinvent all he has in his time as one of the best to ever do it. In fact, he claims his biggest accomplishment is that The Stones were able to tune American audiences into the blues, and bring attention to the hundreds of great African American artists that had inspired the band. He doesn’t take his songwriting, influential style, or his status as a living legend as his biggest accomplishment, it’s still more about what he did to impact other people. In 60 years he’s used his influence to inspire thousands in a multitude of ways, gaining a reputation of honesty and respect amongst many in the music industry he hails from. For every rock star that has tried [and failed] to become the next Keith, there's been the singular man behind it all. The one who never fixed his relationship with journalists, who never bent to the old-fashioned way of doing things, who by all accounts fixed his life and is happy enough to be alive and not worried about superficial celebrity gossip. It’s a testament to how influential he remains that people today still try to harness even an ounce of his cool today. He beat everyone’s expectations, including his own. That’s what makes a legend, so here’s to 80 years of the absolute coolest [and best] one. Keith Richards, you will always be the coolest motherfucker of all time.
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