Keith Richards Quotes
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I only get ill when I give up drugs...
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My life is full of broken halos.
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There are certain guys that are band players and there's certain guys that ain't. If there's anybody lazier than me, it's Eric (Clapton).
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George Jones is a national treasure and should be treated accordingly. A unique style so often emulated even inadvertently.
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I only get ill when I give up drugs... I don't have a drug problem, I have a police problem.
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I looked upon myself, in a sort of romantic and silly way, as like a laboratory.
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But I've always felt very comfortable on stage, even if I screw up. It always felt like a dog, this is my turf, piss around it. While I'm here, nothing else can happen. All I can do is screw up. Otherwise, have a good time.
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Some people think I'm a mythical genius, others think I'm a junkie madman.
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One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats.
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And then I think we realized, like any young guys, that blues are not learned in a monastery. You've got to go out there and get your heart broke and then come back and then you can sing the blues.
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I was in awe sometimes listening to Mick Taylor . Everything was there in his playing - the melodic touch, a beautiful sustain and a way of reading a song.
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What is it that makes you want to write songs? In a way you want to stretch yourself into other people’s hearts. You want to plant yourself there, or at least get a resonance, where other people become a bigger instrument than the one you’re playing. It becomes almost an obsession to touch other people. To write a song that is remembered and taken to heart is a connection, a touching of bases. A thread that runs through all of us. A stab to the heart. Sometimes I think songwriting is about tightening the heartstrings as much as possible without bringing on a heart attack.
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And it was a very, very fruitful and great relationship between the Stones and The Beatles. It was very, very friendly.
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Let me be clear about this. I don't have a drug problem. I have a police problem.
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To me, life is a wild animal. You hope to deal with it when it leaps at you.
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Well, I'm not putting death on the agenda. I don't want to see my old friend Lucifer just yet. He's the guy I'm gonna see, isn't it? I'm not going to the Other Place, let's face it.
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Rock and roll ain't nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.
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One of the great things about songwrighting; it's not an intellectual experience
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Art is the last thing I'm worried about when I'm writing a song. As far as I'm concerned, art is just short for 'Arthur.'
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No broken hearts, no broken necks.
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This morning on Dartford station a guy I knew at primary school came up to me. He's got every record Chuck Berry made. He is called Mick Jagger.
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You can't accuse me of anything I haven't already confessed to.
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A painter's got a canvas. The writer's got reams of empty paper. A musician has silence.
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I'm an unpure purist, something like that.