Keith Richards

Keith Richards personifies the triumphs and indulgences of rock & roll more completely than any other figure. While the Rolling Stones enjoyed their peak years—the blues outfit he established alongside lifelong collaborator Mick Jagger—Richards guided the ensemble toward its foundational blues and rock & roll influences, crafting such memorable guitar figures as “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” Throughout the 1970s he gravitated toward resonant open-chord tunings and a notoriously extravagant way of life, traits that sometimes eclipsed his role in urging the Stones to explore country, reggae, and dub, as well as his incisive songwriting and ready humor. The manner in which Richards balanced Jagger’s abilities as singer, visionary, and composer proved essential to the band’s continued achievements, yet their tight alliance occasionally frayed, most visibly in the 1980s when Jagger sought an identity independent of the Stones. Richards responded by initiating his own solo path with Talk Is Cheap, an album that honored his allegiance to core rock and blues traditions. He backed the release by assembling a supporting group with drummer Steve Jordan known as the X-Pensive Winos, which accompanied him on 1992’s Main Offender before the Stones entered a steady, lucrative later phase with 1994’s Voodoo Lounge. Over subsequent decades the Rolling Stones maintained such consistent activity that Richards seldom left the fold, though he did explore separate ventures, finally issuing Crosseyed Heart, his third solo album, in 2015.

Richards entered the world on December 18, 1943, in Dartford, Kent, just south of London. While still an infant his household faced temporary displacement during the Nazi bombing raids of 1944. In 1951, attending primary school, he encountered and befriended Mick Jagger, though the pair parted three years afterward upon entering separate secondary institutions. By then Richards had already developed a passion for music, particularly admiring Roy Rogers; during his earliest teenage years he performed in a choir that sang for the Queen, only to withdraw once his voice deepened. Around the same period he discovered American rock & roll and took up guitar under his grandfather’s initial tutelage. Disciplinary issues prompted his expulsion from school in 1959, yet the headmaster believed he possessed artistic talent and directed him to Sidcup Art School. There Richards met future Pretty Things guitarist Dick Taylor, then performing in a blues ensemble alongside Jagger. Recognizing their shared enthusiasm, Richards and Jagger renewed their acquaintance, and Richards soon joined the group. Within a couple of years that lineup developed into the Rolling Stones, who made their official stage debut in the summer of 1962, by which point Richards had already departed formal education.

What followed became legendary. Beginning as a blues and R&B repertory act, the Stones expanded into original songs written by Jagger and Richards. The pair required time and rehearsal before reaching professional songwriting caliber, yet by 1965 they had found their footing. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” propelled them to stardom on both sides of the Atlantic, featuring one of rock’s most enduring guitar riffs—an idea Richards captured on a tape recorder in the middle of the night and failed to recognize the following morning. Their provocative, overtly sexual persona drew the attention of British authorities intent on suppressing this challenge to conventional morality, and Richards endured his first drug arrest in 1967 when officers searched his home and discovered amphetamines inside the coat pocket of Jagger’s girlfriend, singer Marianne Faithfull. Convicted of permitting the conduct on his property and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, Richards benefited from widespread outrage over the fabricated charges and purely circumstantial proof, leading to a swift overturning of the verdict. That same year he began a relationship with bandmate Brian Jones’s former partner, model/actress Anita Pallenberg; though they never formally wed, the couple stayed together, more or less, for the next twelve years and welcomed two children—Marlon in 1968 and Angela in 1972.

Following Brian Jones’s death in 1969 the Stones adopted a more direct, hard-rocking approach, with Richards’s guitar assuming greater prominence than before. During this stretch he adopted the shortened name Keith Richard, finding it more appealing without the final letter. Behind the scenes the group descended deeper into excess, an atmosphere plainly audible on the early-1970s classics Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St. Nevertheless, Richards’s growing heroin dependence soon undermined the reliability of the band’s output for several years. He also encountered further legal difficulties: French authorities raided his villa in 1972, and British police searched his residence the next year. (Persistent rumors from this time suggesting Richards had undergone a complete blood transfusion for detoxification, however colorful, proved unfounded.) In 1976 and 1977 he entered the studio for occasional solo sessions, yet the sole item released was the holiday single “Run Rudolph Run,” issued in 1978. Limited productivity may have stemmed from the fact that Richards was navigating the most trying phase of his existence.

In 1976 Richards’s infant son Tara—the third child he fathered with Pallenberg—died abruptly; the official explanation was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, though unsubstantiated speculation also linked the tragedy to the couple’s drug use. Early in 1977 Richards faced another cocaine possession charge, and in Toronto he confronted his gravest legal peril to date after being apprehended with heroin. He avoided incarceration by consenting to stage a benefit concert for the blind and complete rehabilitation treatment in the United States. The episode prompted him to achieve sobriety, and when the Stones reemerged in 1978 with Some Girls the album earned praise as their most cohesive and vigorous effort in years while restoring their stature as a major touring attraction. Stability continued for several seasons afterward, and Richards entered his first official marriage in 1983, wedding Patti Hansen, who later gave birth to daughters Theodora and Alexandra; his relationship with Pallenberg had ended in 1979. Around the same moment, however, Jagger pushed the Stones toward a contemporary pop direction; Richards resisted, and Jagger launched a solo career that gradually eclipsed his commitment to the band. Their disagreement became public, spawning rumors of the Stones’ impending dissolution. When Jagger declined to tour behind 1986’s Dirty Work so he could record his second solo album, Richards countered by mounting his own project and assembling the backing band he named the Xpensive Winos.

Richards delivered his debut solo album, Talk Is Cheap, in 1988. Both critically and commercially it outperformed Jagger’s Primitive Cool. Notices were largely favorable, describing a sturdy rock & roll statement; supported by the modest hit single and MTV staple “Take It So Hard,” Talk Is Cheap attained gold status. Richards undertook an extensive tour that yielded the live recording Live at the Hollywood Palladium, released three years later, and his achievement persuaded Jagger to rejoin the group—Jagger’s own solo results having proved less successful. With their future seemingly secure, the Stones scored their strongest showing in some time via the 1989 album Steel Wheels and its monumental accompanying tour. In the early 1990s Richards and Jagger again pursued individual endeavors, yet this time with an explicit understanding that nothing would supersede the Stones; Richards’s second studio album, Main Offender, appeared in 1992 and garnered generally positive reviews, although it received less commercial visibility.

Richards rejoined the Rolling Stones for 1994’s Voodoo Lounge and thereafter devoted the majority of the next two decades to the band’s regular touring and occasional recording schedule. During intervals away from the group he explored Rastafarian traditions by producing and performing on the 1997 album Wingless Angels alongside reggae veteran Justin Hinds, capturing spiritual music that exists beyond conventional reggae boundaries. After 2005’s A Bigger Bang, Stones studio activity diminished—they later assembled outtakes for expanded reissues of Exile on Main St. and Some Girls during the 2010s—freeing Richards to engage in outside work. He contributed to various projects, frequently those by his blues and rock influences, and made a brief appearance as Johnny Depp’s pirate father in 2007’s Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. His most substantial undertaking was the October 2010 publication of his substantial autobiography Life. Widely regarded as one of the finest rock memoirs, Life became a bestseller and reinforced Richards’s standing as a perceptive musician and storyteller. The Rolling Stones marked their fiftieth anniversary beginning in 2012 with several major concerts and continued performing into 2015. Amid these commitments Richards commenced work on his third album, once more with the X-Pensive Winos. Released in September 2015 under the title Crosseyed Heart, the record coincided with the documentary Under the Influence. More than three decades after its original appearance, an expanded edition of Talk Is Cheap surfaced containing six previously unreleased tracks from the initial sessions. Main Offender received comparable deluxe treatment in 2022, issued in a multi-disc format that included an unreleased live recording from the X-Pensive Winos’ 1992 London performance. Richards marked the reissue by reuniting the band for an impromptu show in New York.