Happy 75th Birthday Keith Richards: Study of an Icon (His Ten Greatest Songs, Their Stories, Vibes and Legacy)
Today we celebrate the 75th birthday of the man who defined and created rock and roll...no we don't mean Chuck Berry, no we don't mean whoever the hell else you think, we're talking about the man himself, Keith Richards: Human riff-machine, storyteller and the heart and soul of the Rolling Stones. Without him this band ceases to exist, in any era of their career, which couldn't be said for Brian Jones, or Mick Taylor, Bill Wyman and Ron Wood.
Maybe he didn't create rock and roll, but he definitely created punk attitude: with the Stones 1966 trilogy of "Mother's Little Helper", "19th Nervous Breakdown" and "Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby?" upping the ante as the Stones became much more dangerous, realistic and intense than the fearful parents ever imagined.
They then evolved back into their blues roots, taking it further into the cosmos with the unassailable trio of perfect records from 1968's Beggars' Banquet, to the dense opus symbolizing the oncoming destruction of the counter-culture in 1969's seminal Let It Bleed, or the brutal aftermath and snowy hangover of 1971's drugged out Sticky Fingers and finally, the album Keith was most responsible for: 1972's Exile On Main Street, recorded against a backdrop of Keith's carnival of smack and the inter-band fractures band biopics commit wet dreams for.
Through it all, Keith was there presiding over it all. Many will give Mick Jagger the credit for keeping the band functional and financially afloat during the mishaps and misadventures of Keith's 1970s drug-abyss, but Keith gave them the vibe, the sound, the feel that Mick would never have been able to.
Mick Jagger would try to make stupid, horrendous and band compromising decisions that luckily Keith would veto, even while still addicted to heroin. He was still a non-stop songwriting machine, a brilliant guitarist onstage or in the studio and as he evolved, he gained the confidence to sing on the same stage as the best lead singer in the world.
And so, what better way to celebrate his life and legacy, on this 75th birthday, then to dip into Keith's songs: some are so underrated, horribly unheard that it must be set in stone what this man was all about: the music.
And the music was fucking good.
We give preference in this list to songs Keith sang lead vocals on and wrote most, or all of.
From Exile to Let It Bleed, Emotional Rescue and the forgotten sex-rocker from Tattoo You, we bring the best of the best from Keith's voice, his heart and his infinite balls, straight to you:
This William S. Burroughs inspired collaboration between Jagger and Richards made it on to 1972's Exile because it personified the gutbucket blues, the narcotic early 70s fever and the deranged and damaged post-60s hate and fuck festival vibe of the entire album, or more precisely the entire Stones discography post 1967.
"Casino Boogie" is the first mellow moment on the album, giving us a breather after the adrenaline and weed soaked energy of openers "Rocks Off" and "Rip This Joint" and it shows Keith in fantastic harmonic form with ragged glory catcalls of "caaant sleep" and "skydiiiiive insiiiiide".
Influenced by Burroughs' "word origami" style of writing, in works such as Naked Lunch and Junkie, Mick and Keith cut words out of various magazines and newspapers, threw them in a bowl and then fit the words together.
A true collaboration, yet that swampy Keith lick and his humorous, prominent vocals make it a definitive Keith moment.
The song is a lyrical puzzle, both underrated and misunderstood, probably by the writers themselves.
9. ALL ABOUT YOU Emotional Rescue
The sad, surreal closer on a head-fuck of an album, 1980's Emotional Rescue was staggering in its randomness from something like "She's so Cold" then to "Indian Girl" and finally back to the titanic Some Girls Pt.II / Panavision insanity of Mick's sexual abyss in the title track (one of the coolest Stones songs).
"All About You" was Keith singing a slow burning ballad, his first for the Stones since 1973's "Coming Down Again". It's biting, it's cutting and he nails the subject to a cross with his putdowns and apparent disgust.
He not only makes it obvious he's done with the person (soon to be ex wife Anita Pallenberg?), he makes it clear he's done..Keith's MXR Phase 100 drenched guitar moans with Ron Wood's in the 3am heat of the studio and he talks about lies, shows going on but "without you" and that you're the "first one to be blamed, last bitch to be paid".
It's ambiguous as to who Richards is calling out in the song, but after studying the lyrics, the performances, the studio outtakes and Keith's interviews about the song, We know now that it's absolutely all about Mick.
I've Got My Own Album To Do
(RON WOOD SOLO ALBUM)
This 1974 Ron Wood / Keith Richards composition wae a brilliant reggae collaboration with the future Rolling Stones lead guitarist, in fact so good that both Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart tried to butt in on songwriting credits and lead vocals.
Here we've got a catchy reggae chord progression turned inside out by that minor chord when they chant "burnin" and yes, We can feel the Jamaican vibes that were flowing through Keith at the time.
Exile On Main Street
One of my all time favorite Stones songs, but since Keith is singing co-lead at most, it can't go passed #7 where it would bypass songs written and sung completely by Keith.
This ragged, blissful wistful story of the band is one of many a fan's favorite Stones moments, with talk of codeine, shady doctors and prescriptions, the band on stage who's "got problems"; we are filled with unbelievable imagery and a tidal wave of fantastic slide guitar from Mick Taylor, backing vocals and a chorus of acoustic guitars from Keith, both Micks and another 12 string and high harmony rumored to belong to Gram Parsons.
The Stones were stoned in the South of France, it was the Spring and Summer of 1971 and they were on a roll, telling us all about their gypsy lives and Keith was at the center, spinning his webs of countrified heroin guitar and hissing sweet, rose-tinted vocals as if he were Hank Williams' forgotten child.
6. CONNECTION Between The Buttons
This tale of European customs agents rifling through luggage at airports looking for illegal contraband is the first Keith Richards vocal on record, at least audibly, and he sings the hell out of it with Mick embossing the words that rhyme together.
A groovy, engrossing tune that ties the haphazard Buttons album together, giving an otherwise baroque album a rock and roll, propulsive shaker, to go along with other Buttons-era rockers like "All Sold Out".
Keith's Les Paul black beauty tears the song up and his high harmonies are the first time we heard the Keith -High / Mick - lower and direct vocal blend.
5. YOU GOT THE SILVER Let It Bleed
This beautiful Sun studios style recording is near and dear to Keith's heart, as the first song he sang and wrote completely himself that ended up on a Stones record.
Originating in late 1968 and finally finished in mid 1969, it is obvious his then new friendship with Gram Parsons was influencing this countryish paean to lost time on the road and the lady left somewhere waiting. Keith's voice is not only perfect on this song, his pipes were made for it.
Brian Jones, on his last studio album before his death, plays the auto-harp, with Nicky Hopkins' organ and piano adding to the somber tone, although we cannot hear Jones well, save for around 1 minute 25 seconds in.
This all culminates in the backwards echo effect on Keith Richards' slide guitar, no doubt producer Glyn Johns copping Jimmy Page's invention the previous fall in studio sessions for Led Zeppelin I's track "You Shook Me" (an effect Glyn, who was angry he was only being an engineer with Jimmy Page producing, told Jimmy backwards echo was impossible to create until Jimmy did it....and then Glyn stole the trick and put it on the next album he did, which was Let It Bleed).
And when Keith belts out that final chorus....damn....
4. LITTLE T & A Tattoo You
One of the best propulsive Stones rockers, totally unruly, riled up and vicious, with a titan sexual charge and knife sharpening Telecaster riff.
The band slapped the album together like a Wendy's bacon cheeseburger, yet unlike that savage swill somehow mistaken for food, there was no mistaking this was the Stones once the MXR Analog delay effected slap-back riff came chugging out of the speakers.
Keith spins a story, almost a sexy version of "Before They Make Me Run" with funk chords, telling us of this new woman in his life that has "tits and ass with soul, baby" (he had just met the woman he still calls his wife when this song was recorded) and he proclaims his love shamelessly.
Elsewhere and more interestingly, Richards speaks of the "dealers are squealin and the patio ain't dry" which according to his autobiography, is code for how Richards was nearly sent to prison for trafficking kilos of heroin in Toronto 1977, an intense situation that nearly cost Keith his life, his freedom and even his band with work permits and visas becoming an intensive issue when it came to a working foreign band.
It took Jimmy Carter and a blind Stones fan, who Keith had looked after, to speak on Keith's behalf and save him from an impossible prison sentence and foreseeable withdrawal doom.
Keith spent the next two years back and forth on smack but eventually was finally clean of the dark shit and stayed with us, living through it all and almost above it all.
Can Keith Richards be killed? This song is an anthem to his endless legacy.
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| a stunning photo, showing the love triangle in full bloom, only hours before Keith would make the swoop for Anita. Brian, arrogant and unaware. |
3. COMING DOWN AGAIN Goat's Head Soup
We go to the lowest of the lows with this one straight off of the under appreciated genius of 1973's funk influenced, transitional, but very much Stonesian album Goat's Head Soup, with Keith burning the midnight oil on this one.
With Nicky Hopkins rain drop piano leading the charge, Billy Preston's ghostly backing vocals and Keith's dripping wah wah guitar, Keith recounts how he took Anita Pallenberg from his fellow band mates Brian Jones "stuck my tongue in someone else's pie...bein hungry, it ain't no crime. He turned green and tried to make me cry..."
This sexual power grab within the band happened in Morocco 1967, after Brian Jones had gone mad and brutally beat Anita. Keith, having put up with Brian's violence against women for too long, casually took Anita from him and the song spells it out loud and clear: the guilt, the necessity (Keith and Anita were in love, basically married and had two children, only divorcing in 1979) and the sadness of losing Brian Jones to large amounts of drugs.
We basically hear Keith singing about his lost band mate in some forgotten black hole in the erasure of space.
A true moment of magic and a tragedy this song is yet to be debuted live by the Stones or by Keith Richards himself.
Maybe it's too close for comfort...
2. BEFORE THEY MAKE ME RUN Some Girls
The brother of "Little T & A" and the more desperate father on the run of "Happy", this 1978 masterpiece is Keith's in-the-moment recollection of his 1977 Toronto heroin bust, his subsequent trips to random and spotty dealers in his quest to taper off and get clean, his quest to save his band from drug-hell and Keith's undying rock and roll spiritual testament to saying "fuck you" to the man, as he flees justice on the tightrope of the skinny, rip-roaring riff.
"After all is said and done, gotta move while it's still fun, gotta walk before they make me run..." He yells into the microphone as he escapes squads of police cars and angry dope dealers wanting their #1 customer back...it's basically Keith saying "fuck off" to everyone except his own band, a true "us against the world" rock and roll masterpiece and one Keith still sings live with gusto and joy to this day.
1. HAPPY Exile On Main Street
Here it is, the song that is Keith Richards, the one he always fits into Stones set lists, the first solo Keith songwriting credit on a Stones record (he still gave Mick equal share for absolutely no reason) and easily the most openly victorious song off of the down and dirty Exile.
Even the song's genesis has Keith written all over it: he stumbled down stoned and grimy, just up from a heroin-induced nap to find that his entire band had taken off, sick of living at Keith's French villa and recording the sprawling album all on Keith's smack time.
So, Keith did what Keith does and strapped on his Telecaster, told producer Jimmy Miller to man the drums as he had for "You Can't Always Get What You Want" and put saxophonist and best friend Bobby Keyes and his side-man trumpeter Jim Price in position and let it wail, the first take being the best and the only, with Keith rambling out the legendary lyrics right then and there... the song finishing itself as soon as it had begun.
"Never wanna be like papa, working for the boss every night and day, I need a love to keep me happy, I need a love to keep me happy," Keith rants and raves, talking about lear jets he can fly "way back home" and nothing being in his pocket, he's down on his luck, but if he can just get back, he'll be all good.
This is the song they will play when the motherfucker finally croaks.
His life, his legend, his legacy all in 3 and a half iconic minutes.
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