Birthdays : Happy 82nd birthday to the great Keith Richards!

These days, do you have to prepare physically before a tour as well as mentally?

Keith: No, no, no. (Chuckles) The only time I’ve ever done anything like that is after an injury – rehab, like when I’ve broken ribs. I find exercise boring. Actually, when you work with the Stones – which I love to do – rehearsing for eight or nine hours a day, standing up and moving around, I find that enough. I’d rather do that than go crazy on treadmills. Mick does all that stuff, but his dad was a physical education instructor. That’s part of him. “Where’s Mick?” “He’s out running.” “In this weather?!” I find that by the time I finish rehearsals, I haven’t just been rehearsing the music, my body has been rehearsing too.

So what is it that drives you on? As you said, you didn’t need to make Crosseyed Heart, yet you clearly put your heart and soul into it. Is your true addiction to making music?

Yeah, but doing it better all the time. Or differently. With the Stones, not that differently, but so that nobody goes up there thinking they’re playing anything by rote. The songs are wide open and you can throw in other ideas. The thing I find interesting in rehearsals is playing stuff you’ve done for 30 or 40 years, and thinking, “Oh shit, man. If I’d put that note in the record, it would have been a better record!” The songs grow as you play them; the older they are, the more magic there is in them. It’s never dull. We’re born to have fun, you see! We can’t help it.

Interview by Pat Gilbert | Mojo Magazine

Photo: Kevin Mazur

“Great songs write themselves,” Keith Richards explains in “Life.” “You’re just being led by the nose, or the ears. The skill is not to interfere with it too much.” But I think I do know. It’s the confrontation between a sensibility and the abyss, not just touching the edge but coming away with a song, that makes a person seem everlasting.

To me, the lesson is simple: If you keep going long enough, if you keep playing, if you stay in the game, if you get up just one more time than you’ve been knocked down, people will ascribe to you a quality that is indistinguishable from wisdom.

Source: WSJ / Rich Cohen

Don's Tunes 

Honky Tonk Women

Jumping’ Jack Flash

Midnight Rambler (Live at The Marquee 1971)

Brown Sugar . . . . . meanwhile that year back at the Top of The Pops studio!

Bitch

Happy (Keef!)