Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943) is a founding member, and guitarist, of the Rolling Stones. He has written most of the band's music alongside songwriting partner Mick Jagger. Apart from his work with the Stones, he has another band the X-Pensive Winos, and has released two solo albums.
Early life
Keith Richards, the only child of Bert Richards and Doris Dupree Richards, was born in Dartford, Kent. He is of Welsh and French Huguenot ancestry. His father was a factory labourer who was slightly injured during World War II.
Richards's paternal grandparents were socialists and civic leaders. His maternal grandfather (Augustus Theodore Dupree), who toured Britain in a jazz big band called Gus Dupree and his Boys, was an early influence on Richards's musical ambitions and got him interested in playing guitar.
Richards's mother introduced him to the music of Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, and bought him his first guitar — a Rosetti acoustic — for seven pounds. His father was less encouraging: "Every time the poor guy came in at night," Richards says, "he'd find me sitting at the top of the stairs with my guitar, playing and banging on the wall for percussion. He was great about it really. He'd only mutter, 'Stop that bloody noise.'" Richards's first guitar hero was Scotty Moore.
Richards attended Wentworth Primary School, as did Mick Jagger; the two knew each other as schoolboys, and lived in the same neighbourhood until Richards's family moved to another part of Dartford in 1954. From 1955 to 1959 Richards attended Dartford Technical School (now named Wilmington Grammar School), where choirmaster Jake Clair noticed his singing voice and recruited him into the school choir. As one of a trio of boy sopranos Richards sang (among other performances) at Westminster Abbey in front of Queen Elizabeth II - an experience that he has called his "first taste of show biz."
In 1959, Richards was expelled from Dartford Technical School for truancy, and the headmaster suggested he would be more at home at the art college in the neighbouring town of Sidcup. At Sidcup Art College Richards devoted his time to playing guitar after he heard American blues artists like Little Walter and Big Bill Broonzy. He swapped a pile of records for his first electric guitar, a hollow-body Höfner cutaway. Fellow Sidcup student and future musical colleague Dick Taylor recalls, "There was a lot of music being played at Sidcup, and we'd go into the empty classrooms and fool around with our guitars. ... Even in those days Keith could play most of Chuck Berry's solos." Taylor also remembers Richards experimenting with various drugs at Sidcup: "In order to stay up late with our music and still get to Sidcup in the morning, Keith and I were on a pretty steady diet of pep pills, which not only kept us awake but gave us a lift. We took all kinds of things - pills that girls took for menstruation, inhalers like Nostrilene, and other stuff. Opposite the college there was this little park with an aviary that had a cockatoo in it. Cocky the Cockatoo we used to call it. Keith used to feed it pep pills and make it stagger around on its perch. If ever we were feeling bored we'd go and give another upper to Cocky."
One morning in 1961, on the train journey from Dartford to Sidcup, Richards happened to get into the same carriage as Mick Jagger, who was then a student at the London School of Economics. They recognized each other and began talking about the LPs Jagger had with him - blues and rhythm & blues albums he had acquired by mail-order from America. Richards was surprised and impressed that Jagger not only shared his enthusiasm for Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, but also that he owned such LPs which were extremely rare in Britain at the time. The two discovered that they had a mutual friend in Dick Taylor, with whom Jagger was singing in an amateur band called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boy. Jagger invited Richards to a rehearsal and soon afterwards Richards also joined the line-up. The group disbanded after Jagger, Richards and Taylor met Brian Jones and Ian Stewart, with whom they went on to form The Rolling Stones (Taylor left the band in November 1962 to return to art school).
By mid-1962 Richards had left Sidcup Art College in favour of pursuing his fledgling musical career and moved into a London flat with Jagger and Jones. His parents divorced about the same time. Richards maintained close ties with his mother, who was very supportive of his musical activities, but he became estranged from his father and didn't resume contact with him until 1982.
In 1963 Richards dropped the "s" from his name and used the professional name "Keith Richard", which Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham considered more suitable as a show business name.
Public image and private life
Richards, who has been frank about his habits, has earned notoriety for his decadent outlaw persona. Rock critic Nick Kent summed up his 1970s image: "Keith Richards was the big Lord Byron figure. He was mad, bad, and dangerous to know." In 1994 Richards said of this image: "It's something you drag around behind you like a long shadow ... Even though that was nearly twenty years ago, you cannot convince some people that I'm not a mad drug addict. So I've still got that image in my baggage."
Richards has been tried on drug-related charges five times: in 1967, twice in 1973, in 1977 and in 1978. The first trial - the only one involving a prison sentence — resulted from a February 1967 police raid on Redlands, Richards's Sussex estate, where he and some friends, including Jagger, were spending the weekend. The subsequent arrest of Richards and Jagger put them on trial before the court of public opinion and Her Majesty. On 29 June Jagger was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for possession of four amphetamine tablets; Richards was found guilty of allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property and sentenced to one year in prison. Both Jagger and Richards were imprisoned at that point, but were released on bail the next day pending appeal. On 1 July The Times ran an editorial entitled " Who Breaks a Butterfly Wheel?" portraying Jagger's sentence as persecution, and public sentiment against the convictions increased. A month later the appeals court overturned Richards's conviction for lack of evidence, while Jagger was given a conditional discharge.
The most serious charges Richards faced resulted from his arrest on 27 February 1977 at Toronto's Harbour Castle Hotel (''R. v. Richards'' (1979), 49 C.C.C. (2d) 517), when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found him in possession of "22 grams of heroin"". Richards was originally charged with "possession of heroin for the purpose of trafficking" — an offence that under the Criminal Code of Canada can result in prison sentences of seven years to life. His passport was confiscated and Richards and his family remained in Toronto until 1 April, when Richards was allowed to enter the United States on a medical visa for treatment for heroin addiction. The charge against him was later reduced to "simple possession of heroin".
For the next two years, Richards lived under threat of criminal sanction. Throughout this period he remained active with The Rolling Stones, recording their biggest-selling studio album, Some Girls, and touring North America. Richards was tried in October 1978, pleading guilty to possession of heroin. He was given a suspended sentence and put on probation for one year, with orders to continue treatment for heroin addiction and to perform a benefit concert on behalf of the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. Although the prosecution had filed an appeal of the sentence, Richards performed two CNIB benefit concerts at Oshawa Civic Auditorium on 22 April 1979; both shows featured The Rolling Stones and The New Barbarians. In September 1979 the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld the original sentence.
Later in 1979, Richards met future wife, model Patti Hansen. They married on 18 December 1983, Richards's 40th birthday, and have two daughters, Theodora and Alexandria, born in 1985 and 1986 respectively.
Richards maintains cordial relations with Italian born actress Anita Pallenberg, the mother of his first three children; although they were never married, Richards and Pallenberg were a couple from 1967 to 1979. Together they have a son, Marlon (named after the actor Marlon Brando), born in 1969, and a daughter, Angela (originally named Dandelion), born in 1972. Their third child, a boy named Tara (after Richards's friend Tara Browne), died on 6 June 1976, less than three months after his birth.
Richards still owns Redlands, the Sussex estate he purchased in 1966, as well as a home in Weston, Connecticut and another in Turks & Caicos. He is an avid reader with a strong interest in history and owns an extensive library.