Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards discusses emerging unscathed from decades of hard living – and why he loves to take the mick out of Jagger
A warm chuckle precedes him into the room, then here he is – Keith Richards. Almost half a century since the New Musical Express named him “the world’s most elegantly wasted human being”, the Rolling Stones guitarist looks surprisingly fit at 79, in black jacket and T-shirt, his wayward grey hair tucked under a fedora. By way of greeting, he claps me on the shoulder. His hands are big for his 5ft 9in frame, all leathery skin and gnarly knuckles – “working hands,” he calls them, the fingertips hardened by a lifetime playing guitar. “I could put a blowtorch to these things and still play,” he laughs, sniffing the air as if imagining such a scene. “The smell of burning flesh!”
There is one thing everyone wants to know when you tell them you are meeting Richards: after decades of unparalleled rock’n’roll notoriety, how the hell is he still alive? “I wouldn’t recommend the way I’ve handled everything to anybody else,” he shrugs. “But I’ve handled myself the way that I felt was necessary. And I think everybody else, if they did the same thing, might benefit from Keith’s advice: don’t worry too much!”
In conversation, Richards has always been the most entertaining of the Stones – eloquent, honest and quick-witted. Seated in the library of an exclusive London hotel, he is on fine form, apparently energised by the imminent release of the band’s first album of new material in 18 years. Hackney Diamonds was largely written at speed in December last year, recorded in January in the Bahamas, New York and Los Angeles, then mixed by February. “I’ve never ever not had fun recording, but this one had real urgency and energy,” says Richards. “We blitzkrieged that thing.”
I have interviewed Richards numerous times over the decades, most memorably in Los Angeles in 1992, when he practically kidnapped me for two days during a video shoot for his solo album Main Offender. “The three-legged dog!” he says, eyes lighting up at the memory of a mangy hound that strayed into shot while the cameras were rolling and threatened to steal the show. I tell Richards that my own abiding image from that trip is of the two of us being driven around the city at night in a limousine stocked, according to his whim, with champagne, vodka and bananas. Motown played on the radio while Richards toyed with a huge flick knife, spinning it deftly between his fingers.