It Ain’t Easy Being Keith Richards: Inside the New Issue
Keith Richards gives one of his most revealing interviews in years in the new issue of Rolling Stone (on stands Friday). For the in-depth cover story, the Rolling Stones guitarist invited associate editor Patrick Doyle to hang out with him at Luc’s in Ridgefield, Connecticut – an unassuming French bistro near Richards’ house where he’s a regular – and at the downtown New York studio where he recorded much of his new solo album, Crosseyed Heart.
Richards also invited Doyle to tag along with him as he promoted the album (at a radio interview, Richards told a producer he didn’t want to see questions beforehand: “The only question I need to hear is, ‘How do you plead?'” he joked). Along the way, the guitarist opened up about his friendship and adversity with Mick Jagger, his outlaw image, his plans for the next Stones album and what it’s been like for him getting older.
Revelations from the story include:
Richards recently suffered a very painful injury, which he’s been keeping secret.
When RS first caught up with Richards in Connecticut in mid-August, he had just come off the Stones’ summer stadium tour. At the band’s July 4th show in Indianapolis, Richards was running down the catwalk toward to stage during the sax solo of “Miss You” and tripped face-forward. “Somebody tossed a red straw boater hat, and it landed right in front of my feet,” Richards says. “I kicked it aside – ‘All right, that’s out of the way’ – and it fucking bounced back in front of me, and I hit the floor. And suddenly I’m on my hands and knees in front of 60,000 people. My bracelet came off from the shock. It was, ‘OK, get out of this one, pal!”
“I might’ve cracked a rib,” he says, placing his hand on his right side. “There’s nothing doctors can do about it. I thought, ‘Shit, if I let them know how much I’m hurting, the doctors and the insurance companies will be like, ‘Cancel the next gigs.’ Fuck it. I’ll live with it. After 50 year on the stage, you’re going to fall over occasionally and take a knock.”
He opens up about being a grandfather.
Richards has five grandchildren, age one to 19. “A couple of my grandsons, all they want to do is go on the road with me now,” he laughs. “Well, maybe that isn’t the best idea.” One of them is Orson, who is 15 and looks like a young Keith, except with blond hair. “He likes to hang with me, but he got to go to school still,” Richards says. “So I play scrabble with him, on my computer. It’s the only thing I use the thing for. I give him the worst words I can think of: shithead, asshole.”
Richards pokes fun at Donald Trump.
Richards recently ran into Trump at Saturday Night Live’s 40th anniversary party. Backstage at a radio interview, Richards does his best Trump impression, hunching down and pursing his lips. “You’re the greatest,” he says, mimicking Trump saying hello to him and then swooping around to shake someone else’s hand. “You’re the greatest.”
The previous night, Richards watched a Trump rally in Dallas on TV. “It was the Donald Trump show. He’s got ’em by the balls right now. I don’t know how long he can keep that show without changing the set list, but that’s another thing. Meanwhile, his closest runner-up is a black neurosurgeon. Between the two of them, they’ve really smashed up the Republican party.”