Keith Richards Quotes & Sayings

Everything they'd been brought up not to do, they could do at a rock-and-roll show. — Keith Richards

Guitar is easy, all it takes is 5 fingers, 6 strings and 1 a**hole — Keith Richards

It might appear that nothing is happening, but that's actually when it really happens. — Keith Richards

You're always learning about this thing everytime you pick it up — Keith Richards

Music is a language that doesn't speak in particular words. It speaks in emotions, and if it's in the bones, it's in the bones. — Keith Richards

It's really good to be here and as I always say, it's really good to be anywhere! — Keith Richards

If you're gonna get wasted, get wasted elegantly. — Keith Richards

To make a rock'n'roll record, technology is the least important thing. — Keith Richards

We age not by holding on to youth, but by letting ourselves grow and embracing whatever youthful parts remain. — Keith Richards

We've got the sound and we know we can find it one way or another if we've got the song - we'll chase the damn thing all around the room, up to the ceiling. We know we've got it and we'll lock on to it and find it. — Keith Richards

I was husband for a week. Changed the baby's diapers. There's somebody in a suburb in Melbourne who doesn't even know i wiped his ass — Keith Richards

It's great to be here. It's great to be anywhere. — Keith Richards

What is life but playing with time? — Keith Richards

I've never had my hair cut by anybody, I do it all myself. — Keith Richards

I've always been suspicious of TV, I've always found music and video to be an unhappy marriage. — Keith Richards

There's just certain styles of playing that you do play in your own way. Maybe it's in the way your fingers bend, for all I know. And so whenever you pick up the guitar it's not so much the sound of the instrument itself, it's like the ting that you add onto it-the attitude. — Keith Richards

The Beatles were basically a vocal band. — Keith Richards

The Stones in a club is still the ultimate rush. — Keith Richards

When you're supported by millions all over the world, you can either go nuts, or try to feed off the goodwill. — Keith Richards

My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. — Keith Richards

You're sitting with some guys, and you're playing and you go, "Ooh, yeah!" That feeling is worth more than anything. There's a certain moment when you realize that you've actually just left the planet for a bit and that nobody can touch you. You're elevated because you're with a bunch of guys that want to do the same thing as you. And when it works, baby, you've got wings. You know you've been somewhere most people will never get; you've been to a special place. — Keith Richards

There's something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It's really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it's all for one purpose, and there's no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it's all up to you. It's really jazzthat's the big secret. Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat. — Keith Richards

Great songs write themselves. You're just being led by the nose, or the ears. The skill is not to interfere with it too much. Ignore intelligence, ignore everything; just follow it where it takes you. — Keith Richards

If you've gotta think about being cool, you ain't cool. — Keith Richards

The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years: observing people, how they react to one another, which in a way makes you weirdly distant ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer. — Keith Richards

The idea of retiring is like killing yourself. It's almost like Hari Kari. I intend to live to a 100 and go down in history. — Keith Richards

Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll. — Keith Richards

Another thing to do with the blues is how they were recorded. They were done on the quick, and some of that stuff was made on wire, not even tape, let alone digital. — Keith Richards

You don't find a style. A style finds you — Keith Richards

We do what we want to do. We write songs. We try not to repeat ourselves too much. We have our own sound and our own way of doing things. Up until now it has always been enjoyable. None of the members have ever got to the point where they don't want to be involved in it ... It's not entirely possible for me to stand back and look at the Rolling Stones because being a part of it you can't. I wish that I could just sit in the audience for one night and see the show. Everyone in the band has said that at some point. But then you wouldn't be seeing the whole band. And that's the problem with that. — Keith Richards

When I listen to what I did under the influence - 10 years of work - I don't think it either enhanced or impaired me. It didn't have that much to do with it. — Keith Richards

I never thought I was wasted, but I probably was. — Keith Richards

Music works in mysterious ways. Once it goes in you have no idea what it can do to you. — Keith Richards

There's a demon in me, and he's still around. Without the dope, we have a bit more of a chat these days. — Keith Richards

It's good to be anywhere. — Keith Richards

I have no idea what the audience makes of me. — Keith Richards

I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police. — Keith Richards

In fact, I take the view that God, in his infinite wisdom, didn't bother to spring for two joints - heaven and hell. They're the same place, but heaven is when you get everything you want and you meet Mummy and Daddy and your best friends and you all have a hug and a kiss and play your harps. Hell is the same place - no fire and brimstone - but they all pass by and don't see you. There's nothing, no recognition. You're waving, "It's me, your father," but you're invisible. You're on a cloud, you've got your harp, but you can't play with nobody because they don't see you. That's hell. — Keith Richards

I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand ... you've got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different ... the X-factor - so important in rock and roll - which is the feel.. — Keith Richards

A painter's got a canvas. The writer's got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence. — Keith Richards

I wouldn't warm to [Chuck Berry] even if I was cremated next to him. — Keith Richards

The only new technology that interests me is when it sort of throws me back soundwise. And I can think, "Wow, that means I can go onstage and sound like Scotty Moore now and again!" — Keith Richards

Treat each guitar track-and each song-completely different. For example, if I'm using a certain amp and guitar on one track, I'll deliberately use something else for the next tune or overdub. — Keith Richards

Love has sold more songs than you've had hot dinners. — Keith Richards

I don't have a problem with drugs, I have a problem with policemen. — Keith Richards

When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. — Keith Richards

I mean some doctor told me I had six months to live and I went to their funeral. — Keith Richards

One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats. — Keith Richards

Poison's not bad. It's a matter of how much. — Keith Richards

A gut-string classical Spanish guitar, a sweet, lovely little lady. The smell of it. Even now, to open a guitar case, when it's an old wooden guitar, I could crawl in and close the lid. — Keith Richards

Some people think I'm a mythical genius, others think I'm a junkie madman. — Keith Richards

And you listen to some of that meticulous Mozart stuff and Vivaldi and you realize that they knew that too. They knew when to leave one note just hanging up there where it illegally belongs and let it dangle in the wind and turn a dead body into a living beauty. — Keith Richards

About myself I have no great illusions. I know what I am. I know what I'm good at. I know what I ain't. I'm always hoping to surprise myself. But I do have a love of music and I do love to communicate it, and that's the best I can do, really. And I can raise a good family, too. — Keith Richards

You don't start to play your guitar thinking you're going to be running an organisation that will maybe generate millions. — Keith Richards

You know, the BBC had not been particularly generous in its deliverance of blues and esoteric kinds of music. — Keith Richards

My life is full of broken halos. — Keith Richards

[John] Belushi was an extreme experience even by my standards. — Keith Richards

Classic of '43. Don't knock it. A Vintage year. — Keith Richards

Of the best things that happened to me at that time, believe it or not, was joining the Boy Scouts. Its leader, Baden-Powell, a genuinely nice man who was well tuned in to what small boys liked doing, did believe that without the scouts the empire would collapse. This — Keith Richards

To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart," Richards notes, "is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart." Keith Richards from his autobiography — Keith Richards

I am not doing it just for the money or for you.I am doing it for me. — Keith Richards

Nobody wants to get old, but nobody wants to die young either. — Keith Richards

We are not old men. We are not worried about petty morals. — Keith Richards

Before Elvis, everything was in black and white. Then came Elvis. Zoom, glorious Technicolor. — Keith Richards

Memory is fiction, — Keith Richards

Wild Horses" started in a B-minor chord, and Stu didn't play minor chords, "fucking Chinese music. — Keith Richards

Music is a necessity. After food, air, water and warmth, music is the next necessity of life. — Keith Richards

To me, life is a wild animal. You hope to deal with it when it leaps at you. — Keith Richards

Mick's album was called She's the Boss, which said it all. I've never listened to the entire thing all the way through. Who has? It's like Mein Kampf. Everybody had a copy, but nobody listened to it. — Keith Richards

The big rules of knife fighting are (a) do not try it at home, and (b) the whole point is never, ever use the blade. It is there to distract your opponent. While he stares at the gleaming steel, you kick his balls to kingdom come
he's all yours. Just a tip! — Keith Richards

The rock's easy, but the roll is another thing... — Keith Richards

It's one thing to play a Muddy Waters song. It's another thing to play with him. — Keith Richards

Its called a playground, but its nearer to a battlefield. It can be brutal — Keith Richards

True friends. Hardest thing to find, but you never look for them - they found you ; you just grow into each other — Keith Richards

Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards. — Keith Richards

I'm not getting old I'm evolving. — Keith Richards

I'm free of hypochondria
although I've got
everything else. — Keith Richards

A familiar Gusism was to greet a friend with 'Hello, don't be a cunt all your life. — Keith Richards

I was in awe sometimes listening to Mick Taylor . Everything was there in his playing - the melodic touch, a beautiful sustain and a way of reading a song. — Keith Richards

When you're 20, you can't imagine being 30. When you're 30, you can't imagine being 40. When you're 40, you can't imagine being 100. — Keith Richards

I was Number 1 on the Who's Likely to Die list for 10 years ... I was really disappointed when I fell off that list. — Keith Richards

You have the sun, you have the moon, you have the air that you breathe - and you have the Rolling Stones! — Keith Richards

What Muddy Waters did for us is what we should do for others. It's the old thing, what you want written on your tombstone as a musician; HE PASSED IT ON. — Keith Richards

I've never tried to achieve anything. I achieved everything I wanted to achieve by being in the Rolling Stones and making records. — Keith Richards

I only get ill when I give up drugs. — Keith Richards

If you're cool, you don't know nothing about it. It just is, or you ain't. — Keith Richards

What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people's hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you're playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack. — Keith Richards

Everybody thinks you reach a certain age and you're a grownup, but it's not true. Nobody grows up until the day they croak. — Keith Richards

All the contortions we go through just not to be ourselves for a few hours. — Keith Richards

Songwriting's a weird game. I never intended to become one - I fell into this by mistake, and I can't get out of it. It fascinates me. I like to point out the rawer points of life. — Keith Richards

I've never turned blue in someone else's
bathroom. I consider that the height of bad
manners. — Keith Richards

I don't regret nuthin... — Keith Richards

If you don't know the blues ... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music. — Keith Richards

Anything you throw yourself into, you better get yourself out of. — Keith Richards

I'd been an expert at taking beatings. Then I had a lucky break where I did a bully in, by total sheer luck ... One minute I was the mark, and with just one swift move, I put the big man in school down ... Once he was down, the whole atmosphere in the schoolyard changed. A huge cloud seemed to be lifted from me ... I'd never been aware the cloud was so large. — Keith Richards

Retire? I can't spell the word. I'd play in a wheelchair. — Keith Richards

I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to be anywhere. — Keith Richards

You see, to me, the art of music is listening to it, not playing it. The real art of it is hearing it. — Keith Richards

I've never had inner turmoil about all this. You find a lot of people these days who cannot stand to be alone. You could lock me up in solitary for weeks on end, and I'd keep myself amused. — Keith Richards

The electric guitar meant that you could have a band with a drummer and a couple of guitars. And that put a lot of horn players out of work. — Keith Richards