The Impact and Influence of Keith Richards, the Songwriter

Over the past 60 years, there has been one man whose written a standard of near every genre, becoming indefinitely tied to the fabric of modern music that very rarely gets his flowers for such an impressIn a 1982 issue of Creem magazine writer J. Kordosh wrote of Keith Richards the songwriter, saying “Some may consider him the Paul McCartney of the real world.” 

Over the past 60 years, there has been one man whose written a standard of near every genre, becoming indefinitely tied to the fabric of modern music that very rarely gets his flowers for such an impressive feat. There’s a record of folk-duo Simon and Garfunkel that’s back cover features a write up of all the prime songwriters of 1965, everyone defining their world with astute observations and creating the tapestry of pop music that still remains one of the most referenced and prolific of all time. Mentions of Bob Dylan, Lennon and McCartney, Smokey Robinson, Phil Ochs, Al Kooper, Mick Jagger. Fascinating enough, Keith Richards name is omitted from the list despite being maybe the most prolific of the bunch, the one who blended every genre each of these others wrote, the one who made distorion mainstream, and changed exactly what a pop song meant. Though, sometimes it is easy to overlook the person who made everything so obvious. 

While it was Bob Dylan who introduced the first batch of "different" pop music, one with a lack of rhyme schemes and structure, the idea a song could create a change, the idea a songwriter was more than an entertainer, but it was Keith Richards who created the idea of heart on your sleeve writing. While songs were once detached from their creator, made with the idea that they were to be mass consumed, it was Keith who took a sideways approach to this. One of the first songs the Jagger/Richards collaboration ever wrote was As Tears Go By, a sappy ballad about heartbreak and the desire to retreat into the youth that was indefinitely alleviated by this pain. Keith has expressed, or had in the past, distaste for writing this song,

labelling it as heartbreak ballad and nothing more. In retrospect, the song was one of the more raw explorations of the pain a broken heart could entail, showcasing ideas of hiding away in ones naivety to escape the idea of very real and adult emotions. It was the first of it’s kind in many ways, especially in the fact two men had written it, two very famous ones at that, and recorded it themselves. About a year later, Keith would write Ruby Tuesday. The song was an ode to his ex-girlfriend, Linda Keith, detailing his newfound understanding about the liberation of women and how he was part of a bigger systemic issue of inequality. “Goodbye Ruby Tuesday, who could hang a name on you? / When you change with every new day, still I’m going to miss you.” For a man to understand he was an asshole and keeping a woman from her life is rare, even more rare is a rockstar understanding that, even rarer? A 23 year old. Keith was able to pen a song that dismantled an idea that had become a standard of what men were expected to act like and feel no remorse for. In rock, it’s no secret that a woman is to be seen and not heard, her story is not as interesting as the one a man can extract from her. Women are the objects, the muses, the subjects, the backbone of much everything that has to do with rock music and its most famous tracks. In the mid to late 1960s, it was not in fashion to let the female character be simply a woman. She was the person to be pleaded with, blamed, a shell of a real life

person with real thoughts, feelings, hopes, beliefs, or ideas. It was in 1966 with Ruby Tuesday

Jagger and Richards recording Sympathy for The Devil in 1968

this was flipped on its head. ‘Ruby’ is never diminished for her wants or desires in life, she’s not even blamed for leaving the narrator. He accepts that he was wrong, that she’s able to do whatever she wants in the world, and that as much as he misses her she owes him nothing. It’s not only a mature stance but was so completely different for its time it was the B-side of Let’s Spend The Night Together. Into the late 1960s, Richards attempted to wane more into the background of the band, focusing more on being the sole guitarist of a two guitar band as they attempted to get their ducks in a row. It was in his moments off the lyric writing that he would start to shape the musical direction of the band, something that remains irreplicable about them. 1968 would see Sympathy for the Devil and its gritty solo, flipping the idea of the long, technically brilliant solo on its head to be short, sweet, and fit perfectly into the story of the song at large. While he could’ve hung on every note a moment too long, that made no sense to Sympathy, it made more sense for the solo to become nasty, take that horror so prevalent through the lyrics and apply it heavily towards the instrumentation. Talking to Rolling Stone magazine in 2011 about the influence of Richards playing, Nils Lofgren said "Keith wrote two note themes that were more powerful than any great solo."

In 1969 on Let It Bleed he created one of the most atmospheric moments in music with his opener on Gimme Shelter. The song was originally a product of his own anxiety, A storm is threatening my very life today / If I don’t get some shelter I’m gonna fade away was about his fear his girlfriend was cheating on him. He tells the story of writing these lines in his friend's apartment, watching the clouds configure into a brewing mess of grey and attributed the feeling to how he was feeling, in turn making one of the most unique and instantly recognizable openings in music history. While Jagger would take the rest of the song and craft a perfect protest piece, it was that starter from Richards that became all the more impressive. There was no aim to create a song in that vein, something unlike its time and impossible to replicate, but it came out of nothing more than one day of feeling the weight of the world. The album also features “his version” of Honky Tonk Women, Country Honk, which is a near perfect encapsulation of classic country and blues influences that it sounds like a cover of one of the old greats. The single version of Honky Tonk Women would also put Richards in conversation to be one of the best players of his day, his simple, booming opening strings becoming the moment he was able to make rhythm guitar seem cool enough to revival the lead - the reason that being rhythm was ever in vogue in the first place finds home with him as well. There was also the blues opera Midnight Rambler, which remains one of the greatest pieces of its day. Richards’ playing follows the same idea that

was taken into Sympathy - the lack of flashiness in the solos allows them to stand as they do as such monuments in their context. Where he really shines on Let It Bleed is in his first solo vocal, You Got the Silver. Written for Anita Pallenberg after the birth of their first child, the song is a love song unlike any others, telling the story of a man so in love he’s hypnotized under the spell of his lover, comparing her to all the riches in the world and himself as the lowly man who is granted permission to love her. You got my soul / You got the silver, you got the gold / If it’s your love, it just made me blind, I don’t care / No, it’s no big surprise. 1969 was very much peace, love, and happiness, love songs garnering much popularity, and rock musicians were no stranger to tossing one in to get a hit, but You Got the Silver took the idea of love and made a grand affair. The narrator not just in love, under a spell, not just in need of her love, he would go to the lengths of starvation and thirst waiting for her to love him, she wasn’t just a person, she was everything of any value in the whole world. It’s a longing song, something that cannot be faked. 

Keith Richards throughout 1969 recording tracks for Let It Bleed

Going into the 1970s, Keith Richards was so prolific that even on albums where he neglected to appear in the recording process he was considered the MVP for not only the style and direction of the album, but it’s cultural significance. When looking at the album Sticky Fingers it’s not hard to view Keith as the albums inequival star, from the opening riff on Brown Sugar all the way down to the song that was molded around a guitar piece he was messing with for two years, Moonlight Mile, it’s hard to argue that the album would not have the sound, feel, or impact it does without him. What’s even more shocking is that, by his own account, he wasn’t present for many of the sessions and has stated he doesn’t think he’s even featured on the closer at all. Looking at the personnel of the album you find that his calculations are correct and he’s not featured at all on Moonlight Mile nor Sway. The album only features ten tracks, so for Keith’s absence on two songs and still being the star of the show is not only very impressive but highlights just how good he is. In those eight tracks he’s featured on, there is the aforementioned Brown Sugar, which Keith has always proudly proclaimed that he did not write - only the riff, one of the best and most recognizable in a career full. There's also Can’t You Hear Me Knocking, a seven-minute, jazz-inspired epic that is held together in its second half through Keith’s magnetic riffs that first appeared in conjunction with the chorus in the first half, blending the vocals and his guitar to the point where when Jagger's vocal turns into a lengthy, guitar-fueled solo it doesn’t become stunted from the lack of lyric, the story continues in its own disorienting way with Keith’s solo at the center of it all. The stand out of his work on the album is hands down Wild Horses, a song he began back in 1969 as a lullaby for his newborn son. Wild Horses could never drag me away was a phrase that had a rather negative connotation, about having to be forced away by a strong force when expected to do an unplesent task, whereas Keith changed the

general meaning with his use of the phrase in the song. In his version of the phrase, it would take wild horses to pull him away from his new family, his pain of leaving his first child to do his job is stoically masked by the repetition to the child that it would take a wild horse to drag him away from his fatherly position. After the release of the song, most of which was changed from its original nature of a lullaby by Jagger, the most popular use of the phrase suddenly took on a completely different idea. How in Just Like Jesse James Cher croons It would take a tame of wild horses to drag my heart away or in Elton John’s The One, a song about running away with your true love, the magical getaway is described as the place with Freedom fields where wild horses run. There’s something so amazing about the fact a simple lullaby, half written and intended for a child’s ears only had grown not only into one of the most beloved hits of all time but also changed the idea behind an age old phrase, even becoming a bench mark in later years for what words to use when looking to name an unflinching and loyal love. A year after the release of Sticky Fingers, the Stones released one of the most important albums of their career, Exile on Main Street. The album was divisive amongst listeners in 1972, people not knowing whether to invite the idea of rock the Stones were ushering in, one full of stories that were neither cleaned up nor hiding away from their own crass meanings. One thing was for sure though: the album was unarguably Keiths. Recorded in his house, on his schedule, under his ideas, and produced with his ear in mind, it was a product of his passions and environment. While it would take awhile for people to come around to this less polished and not as pop-centric sound from the band, when the re-evaluation came it labelled the album as one of the most important pieces of music to date, one that charted the change rock music was going to make while being connected so tightly to every genre that informed the growth of the rock and roll to that point, a transitional piece for not the Stones nor Richards, but for the entire genre of rock music at large. 

Keith Richards during the recording of Exile on Main Street in the South of France, 1971

The following year the Stones experimented again with Goats Head Soup, once more under the push of Richards and his interests, to large acclaim. For the first time in their career they released a ballad for their first single, Angie. Many rock critics frowned upon the idea that they were catering into the new wave of schmaltzy soft rock flooding the airwaves, but it was Keith who upheld the idea, saying it introduced people to the band that had once written them off before, and encouraged them to listen to an album of reggae-esque, social commentary laden songs when that may have never entered their pantheon in the first place. Jagger said in 2022 that the more pop-centric songs - Ruby Tuesday, Wild Horses,

Angie - are all Richards lead compositions, that his ear for a pop song is very rarely wrong. Richards started writing Angie in 1972 while in rehab while Pallenberg was having their second child, a daughter named Dandelion (later, Angela). In his book, Richards said he didn’t know what the baby's name was going to be - that it wasn’t his place to name the child he didn’t carry - that the name just clicked for his melody. There’s speculation on who ‘Angie’ is - be that a stand-in for Anita or drugs - but the song spoke to the heartbreak that Ruby Tuesday had with an even more mature outlook. There was no blame directed toward the woman, a simple ode to the failed relationship from a man who doesn’t like the uncertainty of leaving anymore than the one he’s leaving. The late 70s would get very muddy for Richards, with his own personal struggles becoming the thing the public used to make him a media-favorite punching bag. By 1976, he would seem to have completely checked out of everything, and the Stones' music would suffer largely because of that. Albums like It's Only Rock ‘n’ Roll and Black and Blue did well but held no flame to anything that came before it. Those albums were largely written by Jagger and guitarist Mick Taylor and guitarist Ronnie Wood respectively. While Richards was involved, he certainly was not contributing in the ways he used to. The music suffered more here than any other time, it was soulless with no feeling of humanity behind it. One thing that has made the Stones so alluring for so long was how they seemed to not get wrapped up in their myth as quick as everyone else did: McCartney would become fantastical, Lennon a

product of realism, and Dylan a mystery wrapped in a rhyme, it was Richards who maintained a certain level of humanity about his work through his whole career. There was something almost painfully human about the lyrics and ideas he brought to the table, the range of human suffering and idealization were realized in a few lines and simple phrasing. In most other cases, one person from a duo not pulling their respective weight wouldn’t loom so large, how so many late-era Beatles songs were ventures where it was a solo track masquerading as a band composition. But for the Stones, Keith was much more integral than any other piece: for all they could do they would always need him to maintain the quality that they had for so long, be that their emotionally challenging lyrics or their completely unique musical stylings for the general public. With Some Girls and the return of the un-fogged Keith, it was proof that he was a key factor in their success. Becoming fully involved once more and adding songs like Beast of Burden, Respectable, and Before They Make Me Run after years of turmoil is a feat to not be taken lightly. In the first 15 years as a public figure Keith Richards proved to be an endlessly important writer of his era for how simple he remained as everything grew more extravagant as the years went on. 

Through the best and worst of his own human experiences, he was able to distill a certain lost humanity into rock music and the pop song at large. Between understanding his own feelings so well he had no issue leaving them on his sleeve to changing the direction of what rock music was to sound like, there’s no composer quite like Keith Richards. He understands the ins and outs of his job flawlessly, creating a new direction and standards for the genre he's come to personify like no other. I think Rolling Stone write Robert Palmer exemplified this best in 1989 when using Keith as a benchmark for an instantly recognizable sound, saying "Keith Richards can hit one chord on the guitar and get an entire stadium on its feet, unmistakable from the first note.” Perhaps woefully undersung for his work in popular music, there's not a doubt that everyone can't feel his impact when struck with one of his songs, and what's more represntative of being successful than that?