KEITH AT 80

Photo by MICHAEL PUTLAND

On December 18, KEITH RICHARDS turns 80. We’ve asked friends, collaborators and bandmates past and present – including MICK JAGGER, JIMMY PAGE, TOM WAITS, RON WOOD, BILL WYMAN, MICK TAYLOR, ANDREW OLDHAM, BERNARD FOWLER, SLY DUNBAR, AARON NEVILLE, IVAN NEVILLE, JOHNNY MARR, GLYN JOHNS, KENNEY JONES, DICK TAYLOR, DON WAS, MIKE CAMPBELL and NILS LOFGREN – to help us celebrate this landmark birthday.

What follows over the next 13 pages, then, is a series of remarkable stories, spanning six decades, that reveal a complex, complicated – and frequently surprising – portrait of rock’s most miraculous survivor. As one long-term confidant reveals, “I don’t think, back then, you could have predicted the fullness of the person that he is now. You can live with the cliché of the pirate, but it seems to me that he’s self-defined. That’s admirable.”

But first a message from a former bandmate...

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“Happy birthday young chap, you’ll never catch up with this old man, but keep trying. Have agreat celebration.”

LOVE BILL

“Most of the stories are true”: Keith at the ripe old age of 34 at home in South Salem, NY, 1978

Before we hurtle back to the boys’ cloakroom at Sidcup Art School circa 1960, here’s a few words from RON WOOD...

KEITH and Iused to bump into each other at record company Christmas parties in the ’60s. You’d hang out with The Kinks or The Beatles at one, then hop to another. We’d say hello and have a drink at Andrew Oldham’s Immediate parties. But our first real encounter was when Iwas making I’ve Got My Own Album To Do. My first wife, Krissy, bumped into Keith in aclub.

“What’s Ronnie doing?” “Oh, he’s making an album –do you want to come back to the house and see him?” He came for the night and stayed for four months!

When we first played together, it was magic. We’d talk to each other through our guitars, through the music –weaving through riffs and musical signals that just seemed to come out of the air. Songs like “Beast Of Burden”. We can go months without seeing each other and then connect again. The first strokes of the guitar, the interplay is still there. It’s magic.

We’ve had hundreds of funny moments along the way –bashings and bangings and insults and injuries. Iremember on stage in Frankfurt once, Keith slipped over on a frankfurter –a frankfurter in Frankfurt, you couldn’t make it up. Back in the mad old days, there was one guy who would not leave our floor in the hotel. So Keith used him like a battering ram. He took him to the elevator and started banging his head against the buttons. “I said Up…” –bang! – “… not Down!” Bang!

What’s the real Keith like? Without the drugs and alcohol, he is very caring and quiet; a beautiful, soft guy. We’ve gone through a lot together. We’ve had losses and celebrations, highs and lows –lots of different climate changes! We can take our camaraderie all over the world and it doesn’t matter where we are, we bounce off each other.

Things are different now. We used to hang out in each other’s rooms a lot more and work, or he’d come over my house or I’d go to his house. But as families grow, different plans take shape. He’s still pumping it out, though. He’s playing better than ever.

Mick and Keith are both 80 now and I’m catching them up.

It’s just anumber, though –we’re more like 18 than 80.

Have amagnificent milestone birthday, Keith –you’re aliving miracle. Just keep it going!

THE 1960S

FROM Sidcup Art School to Mapesbury Road, Olympic Studios and beyond. Ashy boy but asnappy dresser, with afondness for cowboys and an unexpected generosity come “Bob-a-Job week”.

“A unique sense of style”

DICK TAYLOR, Pretty Thing

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All the guitar players used to gather in the boys’ cloakroom at Sidcup Art School. Keith would usually sit right at the end by the window, with his little archtop guitar. He was fixated on Scotty Moore and one of his things he always used to play was “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone” and sometimes “That’s All Right Mama”. Keith and I clicked rather well, I liked him a lot. He had a very unique sense of style: skinny jeans, purple shirt, Wrangler jean jacket. I think he had a whole wardrobe of purple shirts. He knew I was in this band with Mick, but was a little reticent to ask if he could come along. Keith’s mum said that he was actually too shy to ask. I don’t think it was that, but he certainly wasn’t some big, expansive character. Then Keith and Mick met up and, when the conversation about rehearsals came up, Mick said, “Why doesn’t Keith come along?” That’s kind of how it happened. He was anatural guitar player. He didn’t have super technique, but it just seemed like Keith had areal flair for it.

“Jack the lad, man”

ANDREW OLDHAM, Stones manager

There should be aplaque outside that building on Mapesbury Road [where Oldham shared aflat with Jagger and Richards]. That’s where the songwriting partnership began. The reality behind that is me leaving to take my laundry back to my mother’s and going, “Right, I’m off.” I’d go down the stairs, heavily, slam the front door, then come back and listen outside their door to see what they were doing. To hear whether they were, in fact, writing. God bless them, they like to say that “As Tears Go By” was the first song they came up with, but I can tell you at least five or six others that came first. We were all learning on the job. What Keith called his “university” was doing six weeks on tour with the Everly Brothers, when the Stones were bottom of the bill. The Everlys were backed by The Crickets, which was just amazing. He took a lot from that experience. What can I say about Keith? He was a very smart fella, photogenically. I’ve got aphoto of him and me at Orly Airport –around ’64 or ’65 –on my wall at home in Bogotá. It’s agreat picture. He’s Jack the lad, man. And still is.

“A great deal of farting”

GERED MANKOWITZ, photographer

Keith was arather gentle, amusing, fun person who felt very much like areally good mate. At the end of the Stones’ ’65 tour of America, while everyone else went to Las Vegas, Keith suggested that he and Iand Ronnie Schneider –who was the money guy –all go off horse-riding together in the desert. So he bought us cowboy outfits: stetsons and chaps and guns. We were armed to the teeth and Keith looked like Billy the Kid. We went off to Phoenix, Arizona and had agreat time, living the cowboy fantasy for 48 hours. It was all about riding, shooting holes in our hats, sleeping under the stars and eating around the campfire. And farting. There was agreat deal of farting and general silliness. It was December and we slept outdoors. Our saddle blankets were frozen to the ground in the morning. It was areal American West adventure. When we got back to the ranch, there was ahuge storm following us. Our guide said he needed to get the cattle closer to the main ranch, so Keith and Ronnie and Iended up herding cattle. I’ve no idea if that was agenuine thing or aput-up job for us Limey greenhorns.