Keith Richards on Getting Busted, Zeppelin and Stones’ Future
“I love studios, even when they’re empty,” says Keith Richards, speaking through a haze of smoke as he sits on a recording-studio couch in downtown New York. He’s quiet for a while; there’s nothing but a faint electronic noise. “There’s that little hum. Silence is your canvas. You look out there and you think, ‘Ah, the possibilities! Given a good song and a good drummer.'”
Richards is well aware of the weight a room takes on when he’s in it — this is, after all, the same environment where he stayed up for five nights recording “Before They Make Me Run,” or built the hypnotic intro of “Gimme Shelter” out of layers of guitars. On a warm September afternoon, Richards is full of intensity, bouncing his leg, his dark eyes fixating heavily during every question as he works his way through a pack of Marlboro Reds. He’s drinking a “Nuclear Waste” — two ounces of vodka, orange soda and lots of ice — which his assistant makes throughout the course of the night using small airplane Absolut bottles stored in a cardboard box.
Richards is wearing Nike tennis shoes and a snakeskin jacket over a T-shirt that says, “Do Not X-Ray.” The studio lights hit the top his head like a spotlight. He’s eager to laugh, and full of menace. At one point, I mention the anecdote about him throwing a knife at a music exec who suggested he change a song during the Steel Wheels sessions in 1989. “I’ve got pretty good aim,” Richards says. “It just missed him.”
I spoke with Richards here at Germano Studios, and at his favorite restaurant in Connecticut for Rolling Stone‘s latest cover story surrounding his fantastic new album, Crosseyed Heart. In these excerpts taken from our interviews, Richards discusses his recording process, the Stones’ earliest days in America and the band’s future, his Sixties peers and much more. “I’ll tell you what,” Richards says of being interviewed. “It’s better than being interrogated by the police!”
Speaking of police, in 1967, you, Mick and some others were arrested at your home in England. You were put on trial for allowing pot to be smoked on your property. You told the judge to his face, “We are not old men, and we are not worried about petty morals.”
Ah, man. That one just popped out of my mouth! I had been looking at some judge who obviously was looking at some degenerate, and I also happened to know that he comes from a famous family that makes fish paste. It’s my first time in court. This is sort of surreal theater to me. They brought up this thing about Marianne Faithfull dressed only in a rug, which would’ve covered a tribe, let alone her [laughs]. I mean it was like “she was only wearing a fur rug.” And she may as well have been wearing a fur coat or a whole tent! So when [they] brought that up, it just popped out. “I’m not interested in your petty morals ….”