With a new album on the way from The Rolling Stones, it’s time for some reporters to question how Keith Richards is still alive.
The latest examination takes place in Britain’s Telegraph newspaper where Richards says, “I wouldn’t recommend the way I’ve handled everything to anybody else. But I’ve handled myself the way that I felt was necessary. And I think everybody else, if they did the same thing, might benefit from my advice: don’t worry too much!”
But he has given himself some good advice along the way.
“The cigarettes I gave up in 2019,” he says. “I haven’t touched them since. I gave up heroin in 1978. I gave up cocaine in 2006. I still like a drink occasionally – because I’m not going to heaven any time soon – but apart from that, I’m trying to enjoy being straight. It’s a unique experience for me.”
Outside of a weathered look and brain surgery in 2006 following a fall from a tree, he says he’s “blessed,” adding that his body “just keeps going.
“So far, I have no real problem with getting old. There are some horrific things that you can see in the future, but you’ve got to get there. I’m getting along with the idea of being 80, and still walking, still talking. I find [ageing] a fascinating process. But then if you didn’t, you might as well commit suicide.”
There is something else Richards stays away from — contemporary music.
“I don’t want to start complaining about pop music, [but] it’s always been rubbish. I mean, that’s the point of it. They make it as cheap and as easy as possible and therefore it always sounds the same; there’s very little feel in it. I like to hear music by people playing instruments. That is, I don’t like to hear plastic synthesized Muzak, as it used to be known, what you hear in elevators, which is now the par for the course.”
The same goes for rap.
“I don’t really like to hear people yelling at me and telling me it’s music… I can get enough of that without leaving my house.”
Richards turns 80 on December 18th and will mark that milestone as well as his 40th wedding anniversary by going on safari with his family in Africa.
The Stones’ new album, Hackney Diamonds, comes out on October 20th.
REUTERS PHOTO
