Happy birthday, Keith Richards, born on this day in 1943

Happy birthday, Keith Richards, born on this day in 1943!

Today is the 82nd birthday of British musician and composer Keith Richards, guitarist of the rock group Rolling Stones. From its founding in 1962 to date, Keith has formed together with Mick Jagger the longest partnership in rock history. His reputation as a rock and roll “bad boy” and his numerous dalliances with drugs have often overshadowed his seriousness as a musician. Inspired by various musical sources rooted mainly in the blues, it has contributed to the Stones having remained more than 60 years as a creative unit.

Best Sheet Music download from our Library.

Richards was born in Dartford, England, as the only child of Bert Richards, a worker wounded during World War II, and Doris Dupree Richards. It was his mother who introduced him to the music of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and bought him what was his first guitar – a Rosetti acoustic – for seven pounds. In 1960, he met Mick Jagger, who was attending the London School of Economics. Both shared a passion for R&B and it didn”t take long for them to start playing together and with other musicians, forming the Rolling Stones, a name taken from a song by Muddy Waters.

Please, subscribe to our Library.

If you are already a subscriber, please, check our NEW SCORES’ page every month for new sheet music. THANK YOU!

In its beginnings, numerous musicians passed through the line-up, but Richard and Jagger remained constant. The rhythm section formed by Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts stabilized the band”s sound and in 1963 they released their first single, a version of the song ‘Come on’, by Chuck Berry. Although they were often considered ‘London’s answer to the Beatles’ and at first appeared properly dressed and neat, their stage attitude and sexually charged sound offered a very different alternative and soon made a difference with the Liverpool band. Their 1965 single ‘(I can’t get no) Satisfaction’, fit was a huge hit that became an era-defining song that Newsweek magazine defined as ‘five notes that shook the planet’.

Browse in the Library:

Or browse in the categories menus & download the Library Catalog PDF:

A series of singles followed, such as ‘The last time’, ‘Time is on my side’, ’19th nervous breakdown’ y ‘Get off my cloud’, before at the end of the decade they focused on recording albums such as ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’ (1967),‘Beggar’s Banquet (1968), ‘Let it Bleed’ (1969), ‘Sticky Fingers’  (1971) and ‘Exile on Main Street’ (1972).The tragic event that occurred in 1970 at the Altamont Festival, in California, where a young man was murdered by the Hell’s Angels, while the Stones were on stage, did not prevent a few years later, talk of the ‘best rock and roll band in the world’.

In the seventies, successful albums followed with the release of ‘Goats Head Soup’ (1973), ‘It’s Only Rock and Roll’ (1974), ‘Black and Blue’ (1976) and ‘Some Girls’ (1978). Concerts were held in larger and larger spaces, with the Stones making massively successful world tours filling stadiums and arenas.

In the eighties appeared ‘Emotional Rescue’ (1980) and ‘Tattoo You’ (1981) his last two albums reached No. 1 in the United States, after a run of six in a row. During this tumultuous period, Richards had become an icon of excess. While many of his contemporary colleagues embraced mysticism and psychedelia, Keith was physically and mentally shattered by heroin, causing him to associate with all sorts of strange and dangerous characters and underworld dealers. In 1977 he was arrested in Toronto on charges of possession and trafficking of heroin. To avoid prison, he promised to undergo treatment and to offer two charity concerts that were held in 1979.

As Richards confessed to Spin magazine, living on the edge of the abyss was a way to combat the destabilizing effect of fame: “I tried to keep my feet on the ground – sometimes two meters below it – so that I wouldn”t get stuck up there lost in the stratosphere of fame. Maybe the whole horse thing was a form of denial that took me back to the sewers. At one point I was on stage under the spotlight performing like a rock superstar and a few minutes later I was getting into a peak with some guys on the Lower East Side.”

In 1981 he told Rolling Stone: “The problem is not to leave it. The real problem is staying away from it.” By then, the relationship he had had with Anita Pallenberg since 1967 had already broken down for two years and in 1983 he married the model Patty Hansen. The wedding was held in Mexico and Mick Jagger acted as best man.

During the fifty years of working together, Mick and Keith have suffered tense moments, which led to solo work by both of them at the time. In 1985 Mick decided to record his album “She’s the Boss”, and in 1986 he announced that he did not plan to go on tour to promote “Dirty Work” the new work of the Stones. This, in addition to provoking Keith’s anger, “with that he threw overboard 25 years of honesty and consistency”, fuelled the already existing rumors of the band’s dissolution and three years later “Talk is Cheap”, Richards’ testimony, appeared.

In the recording sessions, there was an atmosphere of camaraderie and mutual admiration. Steve Jordan, the drummer, told Newsweek: “It’s a real time machine.” And by this he did not mean an artifact to travel to the past, but Richards” legendary ability to mark the “time” of the song with his rhythm guitar.

Guitarist Waddy Wachtel confirmed: “His right hand is magical. When he plays he’s like a dozen of the best drummers in the world.” The album featured collaborators such as funk stars Bootsy Collins and Maceo Parker and the soulful vocals of Sarah Dash. However, the biggest surprise for critics and his fans was hearing Keith sing, something he did on very few occasions with the Stones. Many critics, in addition to praising it, jokingly commented that “it was the best album of the Stones in the last ten years”.

In 1989 the Rolling Stones reunited to record ‘Steel Wheels’, whose ensuing tour was of gigantic proportions. The recording sessions took place in Barbados. “First we shouted at each other and said everything to each other. We needed to wash the dirty laundry, which – knowing each other for so many years – was not difficult. Then we sat in the next room with our guitars and the songs came up one after the other.” That same year they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the tour kept them busy for a whole year playing all over the world.

Keith repeated his solo experience in 1992 with “Main Offender”, which again received excellent reviews, but commercially had a much lower result than the first.

Since then, he has limited himself to his work with the Rolling Stones, who released “Voodoo Lounge” in 1994, in 1997 “Bridges to Babylon” and in 2007 they released their most recent studio album, “A Bigger Bang”. Of his own future, Richards told Rolling Stone in 1988: “I played with Muddy Waters six months before his death, and the guy was just as full of vitality as he was in his younger years. And he played until the very day of his death. That is the most important thing for me. What am I going to do now? Find another job and learn to weld? I’ll keep this going until I fall, until I can’t take it anymore.”

Both in his role as a member of the Stones and in his solo career, Richards has shown that it is not impossible to “mature” in the world of rock. While maintaining the necessary spark to keep his music fresh and innovative. “For me it’s significant to prove that rock is not just “what teenagers listen to” and that one shouldn’t be ashamed to stay at it in their forties. It is an honest job and it is for life. And if there”s any fucking guy on the planet to prove it, I hope it’s me.”

In 2010, they reissued (with ten bonus tracks) “Exile on Main St.”, which went straight to No. 1 on the British charts. On October 9, 2012, “Doom and gloom” was released in Europe, the single taken from the band’s compilation “GRRR!”, which celebrated its 50th anniversary that year. It is, along with “One More Shot”, one of the new songs by the Stones, who reunited in a studio seven years after “A Bigger Bang”.

During the ensuing tour, they gave concerts in London”s Hyde Park, the same venue where 44 years earlier they held a free concert in memory of the late Brian Jones. The first part of the extensive world tour, which featured Mick Jones on guitar, ended in July 2013 and continued in February 2014, ending in Auckland on November 22 of the same year.

In September 2015, Keith”s third solo album, “Crosseyed Heart”, was released, 23 years after “Main Offender”, in which, as in the previous ones, he is accompanied by the X-Pensive Winos. The following February, the Rolling Stones toured Latin America. On March 25, 2016, they played in Havana, Cuba in a free outdoor concert and on December 2 “Blue & Lonesome” was released, an album of blues covers in which Eric Clapton collaborated. The single “Just Your Fool”, a song by Buddy Johnson, was released as an advance in October.

In December 2017 they released a compilation of songs recorded in BBC programs between 1963 and 1965 called “On Air”. Eight of them had not been recorded or published before. That same year saw the start of a new Rolling Stones North American and European tour, “No Filter”, which, after a hiatus in which Jagger underwent surgery, continued throughout 2018 and 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the suspension of the tour in 2020, which resumed a month after the death of Charlie Watts with Steve Jordan as a replacement. In 2022, they embarked on a new European tour, “Sixty”, which began in June in Madrid and concluded in August of the same year in Berlin.

In October 2023, the Stones released their most recent work, ‘Hackney Diamonds’ his first album without Watts (although he participated in two songs) and the first since 2005 with original songs. Artists such as Elton John, Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Stevie Wonder and the band’s original bassist, Bill Wyman, collaborated on it. A month earlier, the single was released as an advance ‘Angry’.

Search your favorite sheet music in the Sheet Music Catalog