A LIFE IN GUITARS

Micawber, Malcolm, Sonny – in the world of Keith Richards, even his guitars are characters. But there is more to his collection than these famous Teles. Thousands more...

Words Jonathan Horsley Portrait Lorenzo Agius / Contour by Getty Images

Keef with Micawber, his number one

All kinds of rare and special ingredients go into The Rolling Stones’ sound.

The rhythm is the backbone, Charlie Watts’ touch and feel on the drum set binding it all together, tumbling between the sinewy and the edgy, the relaxed and the funky. On top there is Mick Jagger on the mic, that ageless supernova of charisma. Somewhere in the middle you’ve got the strings, where the mojo is cooked up live. In 2021, that’s Ronnie Wood and the everpresent survivor, Keith Richards, whose judicial taste in vintage guitars and amplification is augmented by an ear for alternate tunings and a playing style that summons ghosts from the Delta to shuttle around louche rhythms, layering melody on top, probing then retreating. In the studio, an ever more byzantine recipe is followed; their sound is the room, the recording equipment, in the ancillary percussion and strings and how they work in concert. Richards is custodian of this recipe. He is both the hot sauce and the hand on the spoon, mixing everything.

Photo Getty

As a guitar player, what is the first guitar you think of when you think of Richards? For many, it has to be the Fender Telecaster, maybe ‘Micawber’, Richards’ number one, the 1953 Blackguard with five strings and a Frankenstein spec, a battered Butterscotch Blonde forever slung at a 45-degree angle from Richards’ hip. Or perhaps it is ‘Malcolm’, a ’54 model in natural finish that has similarly been augmented, five-strings, left in open tunings. Then there is the black 1975 Fender Telecaster Custom, which made its debut – as did Keith’s new foil, Ronnie Wood – on the Stones’ Tour Of The Americas ’75, or Sonny, the ’67 Sunburst Tele. But let’s take it back to the beginning because the Telecasters only tell part of the Keith Richards story.

Keef’s collection is estimated to be up to 3,000 guitars...

THE EARLY DAYS: 1960-’64