Keith Richards Quotes
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To me, my biggest fear is getting a big head, and that is when I get the hammer. Because it's very easy in this game to believe you're something special.
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You've got the sun, you've got the moon, and you've got the Rolling Stones.
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Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.
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You don't start to play your guitar thinking you're going to be running an organisation that will maybe generate millions.
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I mean, give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string, I wouldn't get bored anywhere.
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I'd play whenever I could get my hands on an electric guitar; I was trying to pick up rock'n'roll riffs and electric blues-the latest Muddy Waters. I'd spend hours and hours on the same track, back again, and back again.
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I don't trust doctors. It's not to say there ain't some good ones, but on a general level, no, I wouldn't trust 'em at all.
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It's an addiction... and addiction is something I should know something about.
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Yes, I've been trepanned. That's quite an interesting experience, especially for my brain surgeon, who saw my thoughts flying around in my brain.
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To me, as long as we've known each other, I've always thought Mick's most brilliant thing was that he could work in an area two foot square and give a very exciting performance.
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You didn't know whether Chuck Berry was black or white - it was not a concern.
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It's basically against the whole idea of what always made rock&roll music interesting to me. I thought it was an unassailable outlet for some pure and natural expressions of rebellion. It was one channel you could take without havin' to kiss ass, you know? And right now it just seems like they're on a big daisy chain, each kissin' each other's asses.
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If you stay up, you get the songs that everyone else misses because they're asleep.
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The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years: observing people, how they react to one another, which in a way makes you weirdly distant. ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer.
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I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand ... you've got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different ... the X-factor - so important in rock and roll - which is the feel.
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About myself I have no great illusions. I know what I am. I know what I'm good at. I know what I ain't. I'm always hoping to surprise myself. But I do have a love of music and I do love to communicate it, and that's the best I can do, really. And I can raise a good family, too.
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I look for ambiguity when I'm writing because life is ambiguous.
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There's no substitute for live work to keep a band together.
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When I listen to what I did under the influence - 10 years of work - I don't think it either enhanced or impaired me. It didn't have that much to do with it.
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Songwriting's a weird game.
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Give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string; I wouldn't get bored anywhere.
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The Beatles were basically a vocal band.
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Retire? I can't spell the word. I'd play in a wheelchair.
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Its called a playground, but its nearer to a battlefield. It can be brutal...