Born on this day in 1943: Founding member of The Rolling Stones, guitarist, songwriter and sometimes vocalist Keith Richards, who with the Stones had over 35 Top 40 singles and albums. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created ‘rock’s greatest single body of riffs’. Classic albums include: Sticky Fingers and Exile On Main Street. Keith turns 76 today.
During the 1960s most of Richards’ recordings with artists other than the Rolling Stones were sessions for Andrew Oldham’s Immediate Records label. Notable exceptions were when Richards, along with Mick Jagger and numerous other guests, sang on the Beatles’ 1967 TV broadcast of “All You Need Is Love”, and when he played bass with John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, Ivry Gitlis, and Yoko Ono as the Dirty Mac for The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV special filmed in 1968.
In the 1970s Richards worked outside the Rolling Stones with Ronnie Wood on several occasions, contributing guitar, piano, and vocals to Wood’s first two solo albums and joining him on stage for two July 1974 concerts to promote I’ve Got My Own Album to Do. In December 1974 Richards also made a guest appearance at a Faces concert. During 1976 and 1977, Richards both co-produced and played on John Phillips’s solo recording Pay Pack & Follow (released in 2001). In 1979 he toured the US with the New Barbarians, the band that Wood put together to promote his album Gimme Some Neck; he and Wood also contributed guitar and backing vocals to “Truly” on Ian McLagan’s 1979 album Troublemaker (re-released in 2005 as Here Comes Trouble).
Since the 1980s Richards has made more frequent guest appearances. In 1981 he played on reggae singer Max Romeo’s album Holding Out My Love to You. He has worked with Tom Waits on three occasions: adding guitar and backing vocals to Waits’ album Rain Dogs (1985); co-writing, playing on, and sharing the lead vocal on “That Feel” on Bone Machine (1992); and adding guitar and vocals to Bad As Me (2011). In 1986 Richards produced and played on Aretha Franklin’s rendition of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and served as musical producer and band leader (or, as he phrased it, “S&M director”)[53] for the Chuck Berry film Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Richards has released few solo recordings. His first solo single, released in 1978, was a cover of Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run”, backed with his version of Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come”. In 1987, after Jagger pursued a solo recording and touring career, Richards formed the “X-Pensive Winos” with co-songwriter and co-producer Steve Jordan, whom Richards assembled for his Chuck Berry documentary Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Additional members of the X-Pensive Winos included guitarist Waddy Wachtel, saxophonist Bobby Keys, keyboardist Ivan Neville, and Charley Drayton on bass. The first Winos’ record, Talk Is Cheap, also featured Bernie Worrell, Bootsy Collins, and Maceo Parker. Since its release, Talk Is Cheap has gone gold and has sold consistently. Its release was followed by the first of the two US tours Richards has done as a solo artist. Live at the Hollywood Palladium, 15 December 1988 documents the first of these tours. In 1992 the Winos’ second studio record, Main Offender, was released, also followed by a tour. Although the Winos featured on both albums, the albums were credited to Richards as a solo artist.
A third Richards album, Crosseyed Heart, was released in September 2015.
Here’s the video for his solo hit “Take It So Hard” from his 1988 album, “Talk Is Cheap”:
