Online Exclusive: Keith Richards Uncut

Quite honestly, they didn't impress me, the Hell's Angels. And if you're on stage, and all you've got is a guitar around your neck, there is no way you can relinquish that control. The stage is an amazing thing. You're up there with the lights on you. From that position, as long as you can control and hold it, you can contain events. But the minute you buckle, it's over. There will be mayhem, and people will be hurt. Basically, there was nothing else for me to do: "I've got to stick my neck out."

There was a heavy air of devilry around the Stones in 1967-69: "Their Satanic Majesties Request," "Sympathy for the Devil," Altamont. Did you take it seriously?

I don't take any notice of that crap. "Sympathy" is quite an uplifting song. It's just a matter of looking him in the face. He's there all the time. I've had very close contact with Lucifer -- I've met him several times.

Evil -- people tend to bury it and hope it sorts itself out and doesn't rear its ugly head. "Sympathy for the Devil" is just as appropriate now, with 9/11. There it is again, big time. When that song was written, it was a time of turmoil. It was the first sort of international chaos since World War II. And confusion is not the ally of peace and love.

You want to think the world is perfect. Everybody gets sucked into that. And as America has found out to its dismay, you can't hide. You might as well accept the fact that evil is there and deal with it any way you can. "Sympathy for the Devil" is a song that says, "Don't forget him." If you confront him, then he's out of a job.

III. TAKIN' CARE OF BUSINESS

In the Stones, you're considered the passionate heart of the band while Mick is seen as the calculating businessman, counting the T-shirt sales while he's up there singing. Is that fair to him?

That's as much a simplification of our relationship as saying he writes the lyrics and I write the music. It's a handy pigeonhole, and from the outside, it would seem that way. And Mick is very calculating -- he is very much into business. He doesn't have to be. He just likes to be -- sometimes much to the business detriment, because he does get in the way [laughs]. In actual fact, we work very well together on a business level, because he's on it day by day. If anything comes up and a decision has to be made, that's when we come together. And usually we're very quick, when it's obvious what has to be done.

But Mick's ability and need to do that -- to have all the strings, the svengali bit -- has been a very positive thing for the Stones. We need one of us to be on the case, and since he likes it -- in fact, can't live without it -- it's alright. He's very astute. Business, to me, is interesting only when it's necessary. I like to take care of business quickly. Mick likes to get involved. That's the big difference. When it comes to business, Mick and I are probably more in agreement that on most other subjects.

What are your strengths as a businessman?

I can spot a scam, or something that is a detriment that doesn't appear to be so on the surface. Like if you sign this deal for extra money, there are certain restrictions on it which you gotta think about. At first, everybody considers it a minimal thing. But if you think about it, it really means you've given up a certain amount of artistic freedom. You're jeopardizing the Stones by taking a few extra bucks. It's better to figure another way to do it, to keep what we always fought for and what we always had from the beginning.

The big miracle about our record deals was that, from the start, we had total control over what we did. We leased our tracks to Decca [the Stones' original British label]. We were not under contract to Decca. They had to agree that whatever we gave them was what happened. They were not involved in the making of the records, or what songs were on them.

This is a mom-and-pop store. We have no stockholders. We are beholden to nobody. But I'm not that interested in talking about money. I'd rather make it than talk about it.

IV. STAYING ALIVE

Part of the Stones allure is the way you've survived a lifetime of bad habits -- the kind that can kill you. Does it bother you that people are often more interested in your mortality than in your music?

People's fascination with other people's bad habits is something you don't take into consideration when you start this thing. Yeah, it's there -- the image of me with a parrot on my shoulder and a patch on the eye. But he's only one side of it. I really like a quiet life: listen to my music, burn my incense. I'm all for a quiet life, except I didn't get one.

What did heroin do for you in the Seventies? What did you get out of it -- calm, poise, a sense of power?

You could talk to every junkie in the world and get a different answer. Because they don't know -- nor do I. [Long pause] It was a damn good feeling, for starters. And we were going through a lot of stuff. I could operate behind that. It gave me a distance from everything that was going on around me. I could see things happening -- fast time, slow time. It was Stones business, Allen Klein stuff, and then Brian dying. There was a lot of stuff happening, and it gave me a sense of space. Eventually, I was so far in space, I was almost in the atmosphere.

Being famous wasn't the idea. If I could have done what I wanted to without being famous, I would have done it. So would Charlie probably. Being famous wasn't the point -- it was making good records. But when you're nineteen or twenty and suddenly you're famous . . .

You're talking to a madman, really. Who else in this forty or fifty years of rock has been able to sneak through the cracks like this? Which is probably why a lot of us become musicians, I think. As long as you've got a gig, it's a brilliant slide through the social structure. You don't have to play the game that everybody else has to. It's a license to do what you want.

But there is a responsibility that comes with it -- the music has to be worthwhile.

You don't want to let people down. And you don't want to let yourself down. You don't want to let down anybody who's made it possible for you to do this.

Why have you been able to survive, physically and otherwise, the excesses that have killed so many of your peers and followers?

I don't know. I have an intuitive sense of my own body and my inner workings. I don't push it for the fun of it. I have a lot of energy, and I gotta burn it one way or another. And I'm trying to burn it in the best way -- for my life, for what I think should be done.

[Expanded From Story in Issue 907 — October 17, 2002]