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Topic: Keith Interview Return to archive
08-27-03 10:21 PM
gypsy Taken from The Scotsman-August 28, 2003
Richards is friendly with Johnny Depp, but didn’t know the actor was basing Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean on him. ‘He’s a good guy. I like him a lot. But I had no idea he was studying me.’

It's only rock 'n' roll, but I like it
Charles Shaar Murray


After all," Keith Richards announces through a haze of cigarette smoke, accompanied by one of his trademark phlegmy chuckles, "Nobody in this world has had to deal with a rock band that’s been around for 40 years. It’s all brand-new territory, really. People’s attitudes towards what a rock-and-roll band is supposed to be are still forming. You’re supposed to be around for two or three years and then goodbye. Hey, what about Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard? Those cats are still going. Mind you, they’re all nuts, of course. Maybe that’s what everybody likes. If a rock-and-roll star’s gonna live this long, let’s watch ‘em go nuts."

On a balmy summer evening in an Amsterdam hotel, some 24 hours before The Rolling Stones are due to hit another stadium stage for the benefit of another 50,000 punters eager to discover whether "the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world" still hold their title, Keith Richards is clearly having a wonderful time being Keith Richards, and - almost as important - a wonderful time being in a still-active and still-successful Rolling Stones.

At 59 going on 60, the "Human Riff" seems in lively good health and good spirits - vodka, to be precise, though he drowns his Stolichnaya in so much Fanta and ice that the resulting tipple barely qualifies as an alcopop.

After 20-plus years of peaceful domesticity with his wife, Patti, and their two daughters (he has another daughter and a son with Anita Pallenberg), not to mention the excision from his life of some of his more toxic indulgences, the glowering, bad-ass drug Hoover of the 1970s is long gone.

That particular Keef, the "world’s most elegantly wasted human being", has been supplanted by rock and roll’s archetypal wicked uncle.


‘Music is wonderfully resilient. When we’re dead and gone the songs will still be there’



His raffish demeanour and chequered past add spice and edge to his jovial, benevolent demeanour, just as the assorted baubles, bangles and beads adorning his wrists, neck and ears - for example, the miniature Iron Cross dangling from a dreadlock in the chestnut mass to which his grey storm cloud of hair is currently dyed - recontextualise his relatively conservative black jeans and pale-blue herringbone shirt.

"We call this the Y-Front Tour because the gigs come in small, medium and large," says Richards. The Astoria in Charing Cross Road (where the band were due to play last night) is but a leisurely stroll up the road from Great Newport Street, home of one of the Stones’s early strongholds, the long-defunct Studio 51 basement club. Are they deliberately revisiting old haunts?

"Did we choose it that way? I can’t say that we consciously did. This band, when it started, just wanted to be the best blues band in London. Since there were only about two others there wasn’t that much competition." Another Marlboro-enhanced laugh.

"All we wanted to do was get a bit better, and find some amplifiers. It was a funny, fractured scene, and there were your blues purists." He invests the word with a studied loathing. "I remember Muddy Waters being booed off. This was, I think, Manchester Free Trade Hall, where Dylan got booed in the 1960s. What kind of problem did they have with electric music? The first half, Muddy went down well when he played acoustic guitar, but then he decided to get daring and bring out the electric band, and the atmosphere just changed.

"There was something strange about that English generation: why they were so voracious about R&B and blues. Maybe it was something to do with the Second World War - something to do with a new sense of freedom."

So how important is that early blues inspiration to the Rolling Stones of today? "It’s all steeped in the same stuff. In a way, the blues is a constant wellspring which keeps bubbling up. I don’t think there’s any music made in the west, even the most banal pop songs, that don’t owe something to the blues somewhere down the line. And it all comes from African music, which is why it’s so exciting. There’s something primal about it which we all recognise, because we’re all African. Some of us just left and turned white."

Part of the process of staying in touch with the primal is the Stones’s touring custom of book-ending those huge, elaborate stadium shows with the low-key gigs in clubs and small halls. From the players’ point of view, it’s a very different experience.

"The big gigs are always fun, but you don’t have a lot of room to manoeuvre. You’re locked into video screens, lighting - whatever it says on the list, that’s what you’re gonna play.

"The small gigs: you get up there and suddenly you’re back in Richmond. It keeps us in touch with where we come from.

"We use those gigs to try out songs. It keeps the band interested and on their toes. There’s something about small shows that makes the band loosen up, try things they wouldn’t try in a big joint. You can screw up, stop and start again. There’s a certain laxity about it. It’s a relief sometimes. After a year of nothing but stadiums you notice the band getting jaded. We couldn’t just do stadiums ever again."

Well, it is one of my fantasies to walk into a small bar in a small town and see the Stones on the stand playing blues to 35 happy drinkers.

"Sometimes it’s a dream of ours, too," Richards says. I’d also like to hear how Mr Jagger sings when he doesn’t have to run five miles over a two-hour gig - "It helps".

I wonder whether anyone has told Richards that Johnny Depp’s characterisation in Pirates of the Caribbean is based on him?

"We met about five or six years ago and started swapping clothes. This is Johnny’s shirt, by the way. He has an incredible guitar collection. We have dinner sometimes and get together: his kids and my kids.

"He’s a good guy. I like him a lot. But I had no idea he was studying me. Everybody that’s seen it is, like, ‘God, it’s you.’ " Another rumbling guffaw. "This is the only time I’ve been accepted by Disney!"

Richards has also recently become an author, or co-author: he, Jagger, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood have published their memoirs in the form of According to the Rolling Stones, a large, handsome, heavily-illustrated volume of Stones history.

"Actually, I haven’t read it all. There are some photographs where I have no idea where they came from, and an incredible amount of research. I know Charlie was involved with a lot of the layout - after all, he was once with J Walter Thompson as a graphic designer."

The book manages to skip over a lot of the seamier moments in the Stones’ career. Richards is unrepentant. "It’s a coffee-table book, ennit? No-one’s going to spill the whole f***ing beans. That stuff can’t come out until after we’re dead." There are also essays, by an oddly assorted group of fans, friends and associates. Eclecticism is a fine thing but Tim Rice?

"Hey, totally different ends of the spectrum! I’ve learned over the years not to judge. It’s easy to say, ‘Oh, he ain’t one of us,’ but I’ve learned to get a bit over that. I enjoyed talking to him, and he had some interesting insights. In a way, it’s like a cross-cultural thing, because you’re talking to people whom normally you’d never talk to, and finding out that they’re actually quite pleasant."

For the man who says "part of my job is keeping Mick Jagger on the straight and narrow", music is still the centre of his life, and conversation will always return to it.

"Music is always trying to find its feet. Certain people are trying to get back to the roots, others push it electronically as far as it can go. It’s never still. Sometimes you can throw up your hands and go, ‘Oh, there’s nothing good to listen to,’ and then you start sounding like a load of old men.

"I’ve got kids and grandkids, so I’m in touch with two or three generations and what they’re listening to. My kids have taken the best of my record collection and they’re playing it to me upstairs.

"Music is wonderfully resilient. When we’re dead and gone the songs will still be there."

The Rolling Stones play the SECC, Glasgow, 1 and 3 September; According to the Rolling Stones (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £30) is out now.

08-28-03 02:55 AM
mac_daddy thanks gypsy.

who's tim rice?
08-28-03 03:00 AM
stonedinaustralia not 100% but i'm fairly sure tim rice is one half of the rice/lloyd webber writing duo who have givn us all those (generally) imo dreadful things - like Cats - and Phantom the Opera - all that pop opera kind of stuff
08-28-03 03:01 AM
gypsy I have no idea who Tim Rice is...I thought one of you guys would know.
08-28-03 03:06 AM
mac_daddy
quote:
stonedinaustralia wrote:
not 100% but i'm fairly sure tim rice is one half of the rice/lloyd webber writing duo who have givn us all those (generally) imo dreadful things - like Cats - and Phantom the Opera - all that pop opera kind of stuff



yuk - really?

starlight express... freejack... hmmm.
08-28-03 03:17 AM
gypsy Okay. So it's cool that I don't know Tim Rice's name? Whew.
08-28-03 03:23 AM
Jumacfly tim Rice??? the sax player who played keyboard in toronto hum??
08-28-03 03:59 AM
Diedre Tim Rice is a former lyricist for Andrew Lloyd Weber. They did "Jesus Christ Superstar" and some others, then had a falling out. I forget when they split, but it was probably prior to "Cats." Tim went on to collaborate with Elton John on "Aida" and "Lion King." I'm sure everyone has heard his work, for better or worse.
08-28-03 08:41 AM
Doxa "he drowns his Stolichnaya in so much Fanta and ice that the resulting tipple barely qualifies as an alcopop."

Haa! I knew he is bluffing! He ain't so bad alcoholic as his image tries to proof... supposedly he also smokes light cigarettes..

Doxa
08-28-03 08:47 AM
caro Yes, and his joints are actually filled with eucalyptus leaves..that's why they look so big