Intervju med Keith Richards og magasinet Playboy

Keith Richards a candid conversation about music, drugs and jagger with the rolling stone who has been on the longest, strangest trip of all

"The Rolling Stones are inevitable. The process is inexorably predictable, whether I like it or not. What can I say to Mick, to the Rolling Stones, except, 'This thing is bigger than both of us, darling'?"

"I was a choirboy at thirteen. We sang at Westminster Abbey. All my gigs have gone right downhill since then. Me and two other guys sang soprano--the worst three hoods in the school, but we had angelic voices."

"Musicians don't start off thinking, We're rich and famous; let's get high. It's a matter of making the next gig, like bomber pilots. But people started to sing about it and advocate it. We went, 'Oh, man, unhip!'"

"If you want to learn an instrument, sleep with it near your head," bluesman Mississippi John Hurt used to say. That is what Keith Richards was doing the night in 1965 when he dreamed and awoke to record (and fell back to sleep to forget) what would become the best-known riff in rock and roll and the immortal words, "I can't get no . . . satisfaction."

Imagine waking to discover you'd written a song. Imagine that song becoming the anthem of your generation. Imagine living from your teenage years onward in a pressure cooker of adulation and condemnation. Imagine making millions of dollars, taking unimaginable amounts of drugs and having friends drop dead by your side. Imagine Altamont, arrest and jail in Britain, your marriage in the tabloids, the celebrated rumbles with your Stonemate Mick Jagger, more touring and adulation, the breakup of "the greatest rock-and-roll band in the world," licking your drug problems, starting over solo in your 40s, and then returning to the studio and the road again with the Stones. A series of narrow escapes, the life of Keith Richards.

One afternoon in 1944, when Richards was about a year old, he left with his mother on a shopping errand in Dartford, the London suburb where he was born, and went home to a house demolished by German bombs. It seems a proper introduction to international society for someone whose life would be characterized by, among other elements of war, loud noises. As a slightly older Dartford citizen tooling around on his tricycle, Richards became aware of another young man about town, Michael Jagger. But it was not until they were both about 17 that Richards, an art student by default, and Jagger, a scholarship student at the London School of Economics, had their fateful meeting at the Dartford train station. Richards, a guitar apprentice, and Jagger, who was trying to wrap his suburban English accent around Afro-American blues, began rehearsing with some like-minded schoolmates, in time venturing to London, where they met other emerging members of the music scene.

Over the next year or so, Richards, Jagger, Charlie Watts, Ian Stewart, Brian Jones and a bass player named Bill Perks became the Rolling Stones. Stewart, a boogie pianist from Scotland who died in December 1985, remembered that early on, the Stones had rented a club in the London borough of Ealing on two successive Tuesday nights and "We got not a soul; not one person would come to Ealing to see the Rolling Stones." Undaunted, they carried on, found club dates and a manager-producer (Andrew Loog Oldham), signed a contract with Decca Records, toured England, had a small hit with an old Chuck Berry song and a bigger hit with a song they were given by two writers from a new group called the Beatles.

By this time, Stewart was no longer an official band member, having been asked to step down because he didn't fit Oldham's concept of the lean, mean Rolling Stones. Oldham also insisted that Richards and Jagger learn to write songs and locked them in a room from which they emerged with "As Tears Go By," a hit for Oldham's new artist Marianne Faithfull. Although the Stones eventually recorded the song, months passed before they began to write true Stones tracks. Their next single was Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away," with its Bo Diddley rhythms.

On their first tour of the United States, the band played to perhaps 150 people in a Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, arena designed to hold thousands. They played on the network-TV show of a highly amused Dean Martin, following an elephant act.

A few months later, Richards and Jagger wrote "The Last Time," their first song released by the Stones as the A side of a single record. To some music fans, it was imitative of a public-domain Gospel tune. "A good composer does not imitate, "Stravinsky said. "He steals." The Stones' next release was "Satisfaction." By the end of 1965, they were installed along with Bob Dylan and the Beatles as gods in their generation's pop pantheon.

Just over a year later, Richards, Jagger and Jones were arrested in England for drug offenses. The Stones did not launch another major tour for nearly three years. By the time they returned to America in 1969, Oldham had left their management to Allen Klein, and Brian Jones was dead, drowned in his swimming pool less than a month after being asked to leave the band. That year's tour ended with a free concert at Altamont Speedway in Northern California, where Hell's Angels killed a young black man in front of the stage.

The Stones retreated to Europe under their customary cloud of bad publicity. In 1970, they fired Klein; in 1971, they became tax exiles in France; and in 1972, they again attacked America's amphitheaters, this time with an entourage including, at times, Princess Lee Radziwill and Truman Capote. On the Stones' next U.S. visit, in 1975, Keith and guitarist Ron Wood--who had replaced Brian Jones's replacement, Mick Taylor--were thrown in jail in Arkansas on weapons charges, a comic event foreshadowing Richards' unfunny arrest in Toronto in 1977 for possession of heroin.

Once that problem had been resolved (by giving public-service concerts for the blind), Richards tried to settle his private life. Separated from actress Anita Pallenberg, the mother of his son, Marlon, and daughter Angela, Richards married--on his 40th birthday, December 18, 1983--the American model Patti Hansen.

The Stones signed a new contract with CBS, leaving Atlantic Records, their label since 1970. The situation was complicated by Jagger's new-found vision of himself as a solo artist. The first Mick Jagger album, "She's the Boss," was released in 1985. By the time Stones' most recent album, "Dirty Work," appeared a year later, relations between Jagger and Richards had reached an all-time low. Jagger refused to tour with the Stones in support of their album, choosing instead to perform on his own with a rented band. Richards, hurt and angry, completed projects with Jerry Lee Lewis and Aretha Franklin, coordinated the music for the Chuck Berry film "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll" and settled down at last to make his own solo album, "Talk Is Cheap," released in late 1988. Then, earlier this year, the Stones announced that they would kick off a U.S. tour in September.

Richards, when asked whether there were any book about the Stones he particularly liked, replied, "Stanley Booth's book"--"The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones"--"is the only one I can read and say, 'Yeah, that's how it was.'" We asked Booth, a Playboy award-winning author and companion to the Stones at intervals over the past 20 years, to talk with Richards. He reports:

"It now costs Keith about one one-hundredth what it used to for him to get through an evening. He still takes the occasional sip of bourbon, but he has backed far away from the 'frequent medications' of the 'True Adventures' era. Being with Keith these days is like it used to be hanging out with the late blues singer Furry Lewis--one maintains a mild buzz in a pleasant, jovial atmosphere. Against all odds and expectations, Keith may turn out, unlike numerous friends, to be a long-distance runner.

"We began our series of talks in Los Angeles, where Keith was taping the video for 'Take It So Hard,' the first single from 'Talk Is Cheap.' The whole scene was strange: a different band in the dressing room, some indefinable difference in the music. The band sounded great, but the Stones sound great. During the first take on the day of the taping, it became obvious: Keith's singing was better than any I had ever associated with his musical milieu. His choirboy past had caught up with him.

"The next night, in the first session of this interview, Keith and I talked for a couple of hours in his rooms at his hotel on Sunset Strip until Patti came back from the beach with Misses Theodora and Alexandra, the baby beauties.

"Then Keith excused himself. 'I'm expected.' After a meeting at A&M studios, he came back with Jim Keltner, the born-again drummer extraordinaire for the likes of Ry Cooder and Bob Dylan. Keltner's third mention of Jesus within his first two minutes in the room brought an exhortation from Keith to 'leave that stuff at home when you come to see me.' "The Stones haven't worked on the road for seven goddamn years. Name me another act that can lay off that long."

"'What'd I say?' Keltner asked.

"'You brought it up three times already, and it's gettin' on my tit--I mean, a guy hangin' on a cross, what a logo.' (Once, in London, Keith had silenced a Keltner sermon with the words, 'I love God. But I hate preachers.')

"Our conversation began with personalities but soon developed a somewhat philosophical tone. It ended in New York a few weeks, a few thousand miles and a few dozen cassette tapes later. Our last session, at Keith's office five stories above the Broadway theater district, ended only when Keith fell asleep, giving me--and Playboy readers--his last waking gasp. Our final tape ends with the classic snore that followed the original take of 'Satisfaction.'"

Interview

PLAYBOY: It's a challenge following the plot line of the Rolling Stones' story: The Stones have broken up; the Stones have gotten together; Mick is off Keith; Keith is off Mick; the Stones are touring again. . . . What part will the Rolling Stones play in your immediate future?

RICHARDS: The Stones are inevitable. The process is inexorably predictable. I don't want to disappear into a bubble just because it's the Rolling Stones, but I think that 1989 will be virtually a Stones year--whether I like it or not. What can I say to Mick, to the Rolling Stones, except, "This thing is bigger than both of us, darling"?

The reasons for gettin' back together at this particular moment? Is it the bread? I would say, yeah, a lot of it, of course, but the Stones haven't worked on the road for seven goddamn years. Name me another act that can lay off that long. We've become Frank Sinatra. It's almost like the longer you leave it, the more people want it. I can't go down the street without somebody saying--guys on garbage trucks sing out--"When are the boys gettin' back together, man?"

Having to make a record without the Stones was a failure in itself for me. As I was finishing the solo album, I got a call from the Stones, saying, "Band meeting!" about getting together. Just at the time I'd managed to forget this stuff!

PLAYBOY: Even throughout the time that you guys were apart, the demand for the Stones was still pretty intense, wasn't it?

RICHARDS: Yeah. [Pause] That there should be so many people who want to see the Stones is an absolute miracle. But do the guys in the Stones realize what a miracle that is? The Stones are kind of selfish bastards. They don't answer their fan mail, except for bill [Wyman]. They've never done anything to suck up to the public. This is it: You want it or you don't. It's like the band's philosophy.

It's all gravy to us. This is a band that expected to do four club gigs a week in London for a year or two, to make a point about other people's music. But the longer you stay away, the more intense it gets, the more people want to see you. If we can just keep it together.

PLAYBOY: Which brings us to Mick Jagger.

RICHARDS: The biggest problem I have with Mick is, I say, "I'm the only one who will scream at you and get emotional, and that's what puts you off me."

PLAYBOY: On the other hand, you were out of it for years, on drugs.

RICHARDS: I managed to make the gigs and write some songs, but, yes, Mick took care of everything through most of the Seventies. The cat worked his butt off. He covered my ass. I feel I owe Mick. This is why I get mad at him. When I did clean up my act in '77--"OK, now I'm ready to shoulder some of the burden again. God bless you for taking it all on your shoulders when I was out there playing the freaked-out artist and getting busted." He supported me every fucking bit of the way. I ain't knocking the cat at all.

But when I came back, I didn't want to believe that Mick was enjoying the burden. He could now control the whole thing; it became a power trip. I've heard the shit from the john, like, "I wish he was a junkie again."

PLAYBOY: But when you told him off, you no doubt told him forcefully. Some of your friends would even say obnoxiously.

RICHARDS: I know. I got a big mouth--I know. But I'd think the guy I have known and worked with longest would be able to deal with that. By now, he should know my style and he shouldn't take it too hard. It shouldn't be so personal. It's my way of expressing myself; it's not a personal attack.

It does disappoint that Mick thought he could hire that ersatz band for his solo tour and do the Stone's songs--if you decide to do something by yourself, then do it by yourself. You got two albums out, do them. But I don't think Mick feels he can trust himself so much.

PLAYBOY: Earlier, before we turned the tape recorder on, you were talking about the period of coming to blows--or worse--with Mick. Want to talk on the record?

RICHARDS: It was about the time of the album Emotional Rescue when it suddenly became him and me. I don't understand how it got like that. Mick waited until he was three thousand miles away and just sent a telex, saying, "I'm not going on the road." I mean, he could have told me this, in person, two days earlier, before he flew away!

Mick is a weird mixture of people. He's still trying to live with 'em all. He's very, very possessive. When I was with Gram Parsons--Gram was special; if he was in a room, everybody else became sweet--I first noticed Mick's reaction to anybody who wanted to be a friend of mine. He was rude to Gram. It didn't matter whether he wanted to be Mick's friend; Mick's attitude was, "You can't have him."

Not that Mick and I ever hung out that much. One of the ways we've managed to work together for so long is that we have different tastes in the way we live, but we can always work together. I just wish Mick could find a few guys that he got along with. A friend, to me, is one of the blessings in life. And I don't agree with that saying "You can count your real friends on one hand." If that's so, then you ain't farming the right acres, because friends are everywhere.

RICHARDS: My battles with Mick are on many levels. I understand the desperation of somebody like that, the insecurity that says, "Until I am sure of myself, I can't let anybody get too close, or I'll get really confused." It's hard going for that front-man gig like Mick does. It's hard being out front. You gotta be able to make it work; you gotta be able to actually believe you're semidivine when you're out there, then come off stage and know that you ain't.

And that's the problem: Eventually, the reaction time gets slower. You still think you're semidivine when you're in the limo and semidivine at the hotel, until you're semidivine for the whole goddamn tour. Mick happens to be an incredible entertainer. Without Mick, the Stones would never have gone anywhere.

PLAYBOY: Mick has also written some classic song lyrics. When he changed the lyrics of your song Wild Horses, your reaction was, "He's changed it completely; it's fucking beautiful."

RICHARDS: He's got a bit of Shakespeare in him, no doubt about it. We've had fun arguments, writing songs. I would say, "I think this should be an instrumental," and meanwhile, he'd written an opera. But it's become hard to get into an argument with Mick without its spilling over into other areas. At times, Mick is a great arguer, but it got to the point that every argument became--at least from my point of view--a personal attack. And then it becomes difficult to talk about anything Especially if you're gonna write songs. To me, writing songs is like making love: You need two to write a song. I've known Mick forty years, longer than I've known anybody except my parents.

PLAYBOY: Let's talk about those early days; neither you nor Mick has discussed them at much length. Mick has said the his earliest memory is of hearing the guns on Dartford Heath shooting at the German planes. You must have heard the same guns.

RICHARDS: Yeah. Today, if I'm walking down a hotel corridor and somebody has the TV on and it's playing one of those blitz movies, English war movies, and I hear that siren, the hair goes up on the back of my head and I get goose bumps. I don't know if it's a memory--it's a reaction, something that I picked up in the first eighteen months of my life.

My first actual memory was after the war was over--not more than a few months--looking up in the sky and pointing and my mom saying, "That's a Spitfire." After that, I guess the memories start when I was three or four years old; I remember London, huge areas of rubble and grass growing.

PLAYBOY: And rationing lasted until 1954 in England.

RICHARDS: Right. World War Two went on there for another nine years after it finished everywhere else. That's when candy finally came off rationing. Suddenly, you could buy as much as you wanted. When I first went to school, for months and months, you got a medicine bottle of concentrated orange juice to prevent scurvy--that was the only time you saw it.

PLAYBOY: Did you live in public housing?

RICHARDS: No, it took us to 1953 or 1954 to get a new house after the old one got blown up by a V1, a buzz bomb. Adolf was on my tail. We went up the road and lived with my auntie. Dartford is a few miles from the Thames. We used to go down to the river and play in these machine-gun bunkers where weird hobos would be living; that was our playground.

PLAYBOY: And it was in Dartford, at the Wentworth County Primary School, that you met Michael Phillip Jagger.

RICHARDS: Yes, that's how long we've known each other. He also lived around the corner from me, so we'd see each other on our tricycles and hang around here and there. Later, we started going to different schools, but I'd still run into him now and again. I once saw Mick outside Dartford Library selling ice creams from a refrigerated trolley--summer job.

PLAYBOY: It may come to that again.

RICHARDS: I hope he remembers the moves.

PLAYBOY: When you were a bit older, you became a ball boy at a nearby tennis court, didn't you?

RICHARDS: That's what I did on weekends, in nice weather. I'd go with my father. From the age of eight until thirteen.

PLAYBOY: And when you were thirteen, you became a choirboy.

RICHARDS: Yeah, I used to wear the cassock and everything, the whole bit. The choirmaster's name was Jake Clair. At that age, being a choirboy is just a trip away from school; later, I found we'd sung in the Royal Festival Hall and Westminster Abbey. All my gigs have gone right downhill since then.

PLAYBOY: It's hard to see Keith Richards singing hymns in Westminster Abbey.

RICHARDS: Me and two other guys, just a trio, sang soprano, walking down the aisle. It was about 1956 or 1957. We were the three worst hoods in the school, but we had angelic voices. Jake Clair had been working on us for a couple of years by then, and what I didn't realize until very recently was how good that guy was. He was tough, really tough. I was in the choir two or three years, but once the voice broke, no more choir. I'm sure it broke Jake's heart, because sopranos only last so long when they're boys.

PLAYBOY: How did you react to your voice's changing?

RICHARDS: At first, I was sort of resentful at being thrown out. So immediately, I fucked up royally in school. Had to repeat that year. Next year, I was expelled, but as a sort of final gesture, they sent me to art school, like "This is your last chance."

I had by they lost all formal contract with music and might have lost interest in it except for my grandfather Augustus Theodore Dupree. He'd been a saxophone player and master baker, but in World War One, he got gassed, and after that, he couldn't play the sax anymore--his lungs were gone--so he took up fiddle, guitar and piano. I used to think his guitar lived on top of the piano. In fact, it was always in its case, and when he knew I was coming over, he would for some reason take it out, polish it up, display it. Never pushed it on me. He never said, "You should do this." He would just leave it there as a sort of icon, just resting against the wall, on top of the piano.

PLAYBOY: Gus survived having seven daughters, didn't he?

RICHARDS: Yeah. With his wife, that's eight women in the house, enough to drive any guy balmy. The only way around that is a sense of humor, which he had in abundance. He's been dead a long time now, Gus, fifteen or twenty years, but I still sit here realizing things that he did.

First off, he'd feed me, then I'd just look at this guitar. He waited years for me to say, "What is that?" and "Can I?" I guess he caught me at the point where I had to transfer any interest in music from singing to playing. He'd say, pleading, "Play this for me," as if I were doing him a favor. I had just started playing, but he would say, "Play MalagueÒa. If you can play that, you can play anything." And no matter how badly I played it, he would sit back in his chair, keep his eyes closed and nod. I mean, it must have been just appalling. But every time, he would say, "OK, OK!" and pretend he liked the way I played it. It was like, "Wow, I'm turning my granddad on." Which is an amazing way of teaching.

He would take me around London; we'd be in Charing Cross Road in the back of Ivor Marantz' guitar store. I used to sit for hours and hours, with the glue boiling and bubbling away, and they're patching guitars, fixing fiddles; I'm smelling the varnish; it's like Santa's workshop. These guys would take a mashed-up old violin apart, and you'd watch it come alive again in front of your eyes. For me, at the time, it was like some alchemist's laboratory.

At the same time, once I started learning guitar. I began attending art school, second year. The atmosphere there was very free. You'd walk into the john to take a pee and there'd be three guys sitting around playing a guitar, doing Woody Guthrie and Ramblin' Jack Elliott stuff. I was getting into the blues--Big Bill Broonzy, Jesse Fuller--by hearing these guys play.

PLAYBOY: Then you met Mick again.

RICHARDS: Right. In a town like Dartford, if anybody's headed for London or any stop in between, then in Dartford station, you're bound to meet. The thing about Mick and my meeting was that he was carrying two albums with him--Rockin' at the Hops, by Chuck Berry, and The Best of Muddy Waters. I had only heard about Muddy up to that point.

So we're on the train and I say, "Man, I know all Chuck Berry's licks." Mick says, "You play guitar?" He had a little youth-club band, doing Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran stuff. He was very heavily into blues, already had his connection--you couldn't get that music in England. The guy he would write to was Marshall Chess at 2120 South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, 'cause Marshall filled Chess Records' international orders.

PLAYBOY: The man who would later become the first head of Rolling Stones Records.

RICHARDS: Yeah. Very soon after Mick and I met, there was an ad in the music papers: England's first rhythm-and-blues club was opening up. But it was in Ealing, in West London. If I ever got away from Dartford, it was just to ride my bike to go to Sidcup, or to go to my granddad's in London for a few days. Mick came from a better part of town than I did, a fairly swanky area, a house all by itself with a garage. Mick's dad, Joe, was very well respected, used to go to America to referee basketball games, quite a big wheel in physical education. Mick had a far broader earlier education. I was workin' class and meeting Mick's friends and the chicks he knew was like, "Wow, I'm really movin' up in society."

When the Ealing club opened, Mick actually managed to borrow his dad's car. It was my first trip into the big town just to have some fun. It was a revelation because it was a small joint and the band was cooking--it was Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated, with Jack Bruce on bass, Charles Watts on drums, Alexis on guitar, Cyril Davies on harmonica. Long John Baldry was there, also Ian Stewart, and Brian Jones played some Elmore James shit that was sheerly electrifying, absolutely amazing. I was hooked from that minute on.

I was already hooked on the music, but this was like a musicians' club; suddenly, I was in the union without a card. Alexis and I talked, and the next week, he invited Mick and me to come up and play. Even though it was a total dump, ankle deep in water under a subway station, it became the hip place, the debutante slumming joint. All these chicks, Lady So-and-So--you got a quick education on what a lady was.

PLAYBOY: You eventually left art school, right?

RICHARDS: Yeah, and I can understand what a disappointment I must have been to my dad. He spent his life in a goddamn warehouse, getting up at four-thirty in the morning to go all the way to London and get back at seven at night, working day in and day out until retirement. According to him, I should have gone through that, too. This is what I was workin' my butt off for, he must've thought, this creep in rock-and-roll luminous socks at the top of the stairs, bashing away at a guitar when he should be doing his homework? My old dad was gonna put me through the wall. I made a few phony attempts at getting a job as a teaboy in an advertising agency, then I took the easy route--I got out.

I knew what I wanted to do: get this band together. I knew that I wasn't taking the obvious route if I wanted to impress my parents, to make something of myself. Instead, I was becoming this very unlikely sort of missionary for a new kind of music. That's what Jimmy Reed, Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf did to me. Elvis, Buddy, Eddie Cochran, Jerry Lee [Lewis], Little Richard, Bo Diddley--it's what all those cats did to me.

Now Brian [Jones], who was a little older than me, moved up to London with his chick and his baby. He got this pad in Howard Square, very decrepit place, mushrooms and fungus growin' out of the walls. Mick went round to see Brian one night. Brian wasn't there, but his old lady was. Mick was drunk and he screwed her. This caused a whole trauma with Brian, but it really put him and Mick very tight together; they went through a whole emotional scene and became very close.

The chick split, Brian found an apartment out in the suburbs of Beckenham and I started to live there, too. This was an intense learning period, figuring out Jimmy Reed and stuff. You have to remember, at this time--'61, '62--Elvis is just out of the Army, Buddy and Eddie are dead, Chuck's in jail, Jerry Lee is disgraced and Little Richard has thrown his rings in the water. But to us in England, this thing made our world go into full Technicolor, CinemaScope, where before, it was a drab existence, scraping by. Even though the first wind had gone out of rock and roll, we were not about to let this motherfucker go.

I'm only eighteen, and already people ain't hearin' this music anymore, and it had lit my life up! Now, one way or another, I've got to keep the flame alive, just for myself, very selfish. I didn't expect anybody else to get lit up by it. We thought, Sure, we'd love to make records, but we were not in that league. We wanted to sell records for Jimmy Reed, Muddy, John Lee Hooker. We were disciples--if we could turn people in to that, then that was enough. That was the total original aim.

PLAYBOY: You had no thought of attaining rock-and-roll stardom?

RICHARDS: If you wanted that in England, you had to go the ballroom route, where you came under the influence of the big promoters, the strong-arm boys. Which meant that you played three or four ballrooms a night, forty-five minutes on stage, get off, jump into the car, you're driven to another one, back to the other one for the second show, and you wear these shitty little suits that they advance you money on and charge you for later, plus wear and tear, and if you don't make the gig, they break your fucking leg. [Heavy accent] "Because Moe is not going to stand for any fookin' nonsense, my boy, I'm telling you. This is Lou, this is me bruvver Johnny; don't ask this bloke's name."

So the only way out of that was to go into the other zone, which in England happens to be the students--who are not gonna go to ballrooms. It's a class thing; university and art school kids don't go to a ballroom, where there are all these chicks with beehives and tight miniskirts and guys looking for a fight. But at the same time, something else was goin' on. Suddenly, the kids from the ballrooms were coming to these R&B joints.

For the best part of a year, we had been putting the Stones together, not playing any gigs but rehearsing. By now, we were living together, Brian, Mick and me, in this flat in Edith Grove with this cat Phelge, who's worth a brief mention 'cause he was as horrifyingly disgusting as Brian and myself at the time. It was the most incredible scene: Mick was going through his first camp period. He would wander round in a blue-linen housecoat, wavin' his hands everywhere--[high-pitched voice] "Oh! Don't!" A real King's Road queen for about six months, and Brian and I used to take the piss out of him. While Mick was on that kick, this guy Phelge was going through his phase, being the most disgusting person ever. You would walk into this pad, and he would be standing at the top of the stairs, completely nude except for his underpants, which would be filthy, on top of his head, and he'd be spitting at you. It wasn't a thing to get mad about; you'd just collapse laughing. Covered in spit, you'd collapse laughing.

And this pad is getting so screwed up--for, like, six months, we used the kitchen to play in, just rehearse in, because it was cold, and slowly, the place got filthy and started to smell, so we bolted the doors and the kitchen was condemned.

At that time, I was into making tapes. I had a tape recorder with a microphone wired through the window in the cistern of the bog [toilet]. The tape recorder was at the foot of the bed. I had reels and reels of tapes of people goin' to the bog. Chains being pulled. On cheap tape recorders, if you record the flushing of a john, it sounds like people applauding. So Brian and I would put on a kind of show, like with the chick from downstairs: "And now, folks, Miss Judy What's-Her-Name." Every time somebody would go into the bog, I'd switch the tape recorder on and go round to the bog door and knock, and they'd say, "Wait a minute," and you'd get these conversations going through the door, followed at the end by applause. That's the sort of thing we were into. Real down-home.

Anyway, Brian was just about making enough--he had a job in a record store, after being fired from the electrical department of Whitely's for stealin' cash out of the till--to keep from being chucked out of this place. It was winter, the worst winter ever. It was down to taping our pants up, Scotch tape across the rips.

Then the Beatles' first record comes out. They've got harmonica. We'd heard they did Chuck Berry songs--but we were really brought down; it was the beginning of Beatlemania. Then, suddenly, everybody's lookin' round for new groups, more and more groups are being signed, and Alexis Korner gets a recording contract. He's gotten so big he splits from this club gig, and who gets his spot? None other than . . . the Rolling Stones. Now we start makin' just about enough bread to stay alive. And we're gettin' this place raving. And there was another place, called Eel Pie Island, down on the Thames, we used to play regularly. It's really jumpin' at these places.

PLAYBOY: The publicity attracted Andrew Oldham, your first record producer. He thought your guitars should be plugged into the wall sockets, didn't he?

RICHARDS: Andrew was very young, even younger than we were. He had nobody on his books, but he was an incredible bullshitter, fantastic hustler, and he had also worked on the early Beatles publicity. He'd got together those very moody pictures of the Beatles that sold them in the first place, so he did have people interested in what he was doing. He came along with this other cat he was in partnership with, Eric Easton, who was much older, used to be an organ player in that dying era of vaudeville after the war, in the Fifties, when the music hall ground to a halt as a means of popular entertainment. He wasn't making a lot of bread, but people in real showbiz sort of respected him. He had contacts--one chick singer who'd had a couple of top-twenty records; he wasn't completely out of it--and he knew a lot about the rest of England, which we knew nothing about; he knew every hall.

They said they had a Decca contract for us. But we had cut a few tracks at I.B.C. Studios, where Stu's friend Glyn Johns was working as an engineer, and had signed a recording contract with I.B.C. They had no outlet and they couldn't get any record company interested in them. Our I.B.C. contract, though it was nothing, was still a binding contract, so Brian pulled another one of his fantastic get-out schemes.

PLAYBOY: Meaning what?

RICHARDS: Before this cat at I.B.C. could hear that we were signing with Decca, Brian went to see him with a hundred quid [pounds] that Andrew and Eric had given him and said, "Look, we're not interested, we're breaking up as a band, we're not going to play anymore; but in case we get something together in the future, we don't want to be tied down by this contract, so can we buy ourselves out of it for a hundred pounds?" After hearing this story, which he obviously believed, this old Scrooge took the hundred quid. The next day, he heard that we had a contract with Decca, that we were gonna be making our first single, that we were London's answer to the Beatles, folks.

PLAYBOY: That was also when Oldham decided that there should be only five Rolling Stones.

RICHARDS: That was when Brian started to realize things had gone beyond his control. Before this, everybody knew that Brian considered it to be his band. Now Andrew Oldham saw Mick as a big sex symbol and wanted to kick Stu out, but we wouldn't have it. Eventually, because Brian had known him longer than we, and the band was Brian's idea in the first place, Brian had to tell Stu how we'd signed with these people, how they were very image conscious and how he didn't fit in. If I'd been Stu, I'd have said, "Fuck it. Fuck you." But he stayed on to be our roadie, which I think is incredible, so bighearted. Because by now, we were star-struck, every one of us. The Beatles had been to see us play and we'd been to see them at the Albert Hall, and we'd seen all the screaming chicks, the birds down in front, and couldn't wait to hear them scream for us.

PLAYBOY: You then went on the Stones' first big English tour.

RICHARDS: With Little Richard, Bo Diddley and the Everly Brothers. This was our first contact with the cats whose music we'd been playing. Hearing Little Richard and Bo Diddley and the Everly Brothers every night was the way we'd been drawn into the whole pop thing. We didn't feel we were selling out, because we were learning a lot by going into this side of the scene--where audiences sat and listened and watched, instead of just dancing to it. That was when Mick really started coming into his own.

PLAYBOY: Didn't you bop Brian one during this tour?

RICHARDS: Yeah. One night in my dressing room, the stage manager sticks his head in the door and yells, "You're on!" So we're picking up guitars and heading for the stage, and as we're walking downstairs, Brian passes me and I say, "You cunt, you et me chicken!" and I bopped him in the eye. We went on stage, and as we're playing, Brian's eye starts to swell and change colors. In the next few days, it turned every color of the rainbow--red, purple, blue, green, yellow.

PLAYBOY: And shortly after that tour, you experienced your first early-Sixties pop hysteria.

RICHARDS: Yeah. Not Fade Away came out, and it was just like the Beatles again--Stonemania, incredible scenes every night. We would never finish a gig. It was impossible; the chicks would swarm on stage with the first two numbers. The kids forced you to stop playing these places, ballrooms and clubs, because the chicks were going crazy. The minute you walked on stage, they'd be ripping you to pieces. You took your life in your hands just to walk out there. I was strangled twice. I used to wear a chain, and the chain would get crossed, one chick pulling that end and one the other. They could kill you in a second--I'd rather be in a fight any day.

PLAYBOY: And within a few months of your album's release, the Stones made their first visit to the United States.

RICHARDS: We thought, This is the payoff. We got to fly to America. Just to get there! To cats like Charlie and me, America was fairyland. Nobody in our lives had a way of gettin' there, even once, just for a visit! Forget it, no way. To be paid to go there and play to Americans, we were shitting ourselves!

PLAYBOY: Did the tour sell out?

RICHARDS: Uh, no. In Omaha, I remember about six hundred people in a fifteen-thousand-seat auditorium.

PLAYBOY: That was where you had trouble backstage over illegal alcohol.

RICHARDS: It was the days of Scotch and Coke, if anybody can remember back that far. A couple of the Stones, I dunno who, were drinking whisky and Coke, and I was drinking just Coke. A cop looked in the dressing room, saw the whisky bottle and told them to pour their drinks down the bog. I refused to pour mine down. I said, "Why the fuck is an American cop telling me to pour the national drink down the bog?" Cop pulled a gun on me. Very strange scene to me, a cop ordering me at gunpoint to pour a Coke down the john.

PLAYBOY: You had trouble in the Midwest, but you did very well on both coasts, didn't you?

PLAYBOY: That was also when Oldham decided that there should be only five Rolling Stones.

PLAYBOY: You then went on the Stones' first big English tour.

PLAYBOY: Didn't you bop Brian one during this tour?

PLAYBOY: And shortly after that tour, you experienced your first early-Sixties pop hysteria.

PLAYBOY: And within a few months of your album's release, the Stones made their first visit to the United States.

PLAYBOY: Did the tour sell out?

RICHARDS: Uh, no. In Omaha, I remember about six hundred people in a fifteen-thousand-seat auditorium.

PLAYBOY: That was where you had trouble backstage over illegal alcohol.

PLAYBOY: You had trouble in the Midwest, but you did very well on both coasts, didn't you?

RICHARDS: In the middle of the country, forget it. The second tour, even the next year, early '65, we were still playing to empty places. After Satisfaction, the arenas filled up, but those empty towns, that's where you learn your craft--how to put on a show when there's a hundred people in a place that seats five thousand. You play to those few and the joint's rocking, and everybody has forgotten about all these empty seats, this vast cavern that we can see as we're looking at this wedding party down front. You manage to create this whole new environment.

PLAYBOY: In a sense, Satisfaction and the Jagger-Richards hits that followed created your audience.

RICHARDS: That's where Andrew Oldham came back into the picture. After the first album, Andrew said, "We've got to find somebody to write songs and then lock them up and keep them to ourselves or else whaddaya gonna do? Just some more cover versions? You can do it for another album or two, but without a source of new material, you can't make it." I said, "That's not my job."

So what he did was lock us up in the kitchen for a night and say, "Don't come out without a song." We sat around and came up with As Tears Go By. It was unlike most Rolling Stones material, but that's what happens when you write songs; you immediately fly to some other realm. The weird thing is that Andrew found Marianne Faithfull at the same time, bunged it to her and it was a fucking hit for her--we were songwriters already! But it took the rest of that year to dare to write anything for the Stones.

PLAYBOY: Then, one night, a song, or part of a song, woke you up. Where were you?

RICHARDS: To the best of my recollection, the London Hilton. I dreamt this riff--I don't do that very often--and that was the first time it had happened to me. I had my guitar next to the bed and the first Philips cassette recorder, and I just woke up, picked up the guitar . . . "I can't get no . . . satisfaction. . . . I can't get no . . . satisfaction. . . . [snores]"

The only way I found it again was, the next morning, I checked out my gear, and the tape was at the wrong end; it had played all the way through. How had that happened? Had somebody come in during the night--Mick or one of the boys--and said, "Fuck you, Keith Richards, piece of shit"? I rewound to find out what had happened, and there was thirty seconds of Satisfaction--and sixty minutes of me snoring.

PLAYBOY: As the string of Stones hits lengthened in the Sixties, some people, such as Brian Jones, were getting bent out of shape, weren't they?

RICHARDS: Brian was a weird kind of guy. He was a manipulator of the first order. He had to create a schism. He needed some sort of conspiracy--he and Mick against me--which is fine; when you have plenty of time, you can deal with it. But on the road, when everybody's working, tryin' to make the next gig, like three hundred and forty-odd gigs a year for four or five years, you don't have the patience to take it. Also, I realized that I was becoming very much like Brian--Mick and I were being merciless on him. The harder the work got, the more awkward Brian got, and the more fucked-up he would get himself when he didn't get his way, until we would be workin' three weeks in the Midwest with one guitar player; namely, me. That was when I learned what the Rolling Stones were all about. You can't cover what you want from the Stones with one guitar.

PLAYBOY: Don't you think Brian had a feeling of insecurity once you and Mick started to write together?

RICHARDS: That was the first . . . alienation. Brian and I were at odds from, oh, '65 through '66. At the time, Brian was in bad shape, far away from the rest of the band. He was a suitable case for treatment. He needed to be in a fucking hospital. He needed help. Then he turned up with Anita. I still have to check myself as to whether I decided to become friends again with Brian because of her. Did I do that? I'm bein' honest, I'm trying to figure it out--I think it's fifty-fifty. Because as fascinating as Anita was, she scared the pants off me. She knew everything, and she could say it in five languages.

We--Mick, Brian, Anita, me, some others--we're all in Marrakesh. Just about everybody's dropping acid. The air is getting thick. Brian tried to beat Anita up and broke his ribs in the process. That shows you how tough Anita is. It's like The Sheik of Araby. Anita and I then split in the camouflaged Bentley in the middle of the night and make a dash for Tangier. . . .

PLAYBOY: And Brian, left behind, attempted suicide.

RICHARDS: [Pause] Mmm. I made friends again with Brian and then stole his old lady. So I really screwed it up.

PLAYBOY: After that, Brian was never really healthy again. He destroyed his own physical stamina, which was considerable.

RICHARDS: The psychedelic era sucked Brian right in. Without realizing it, he passed it on to Jimi [Hendrix]. The embrace of death.

PLAYBOY: Brian's death was one of a number of things that could have destroyed the Stones.

RICHARDS: Brian was already effectively dead when he died; he was already out of the band. A few weeks before, Mick and I went down to see Brian and say, "Look, this is not going to work. We're gettin' Beggar's Banquet together and you ain't there and you're not in the band really. You're better off followin' your own nose." What we were trying to say was a difficult thing. After all, Brian was the one who kicked Stu out of the band. In a way, it was like the script started to take shape after that.

PLAYBOY: After the low point of Brian's death, the Stones kept sliding until they hit an even lower point: Altamont. That concert ended an era. A young black man brandishing a gun was killed by Hell's Angels in front of the stage as Mick sang Under My Thumb. Why were the Angels there in the first place?

RICHARDS: We had wanted to do this free concert in San Francisco, in the spirit of the times. We left it all to the Grateful Dead. We just said, "You cats do free concerts in this town all the goddamn time; how's it done?" But there is no blame attached to anybody, including the Angels. The guy who got knocked off, in a way, he asked for it.

PLAYBOY: He may have done a dumb thing when he pulled a gun on the Angels, but then again, didn't you ask for it also by getting tough with them?

RICHARDS: I asked for it by opening my goddamn trap. It's amazing, in retrospect, that it wasn't far worse. I ain't very prudent. I jeopardized everybody there at Altamont, but it was something that had to be said or all control would have been lost. Mick was sort of begging, "Please, please." I'd seen the way things were goin', pointed to a Hell's Angel and said, "That guy there, make him stop." I knew the retribution of the Hell's Angels would have been immediate--some motherfucker would have just turned around and shot me. My thoughts went out the window. Actually, I don't give a shit about a few guys who ride Harley-Davidsons. Why should I? I'm a guitar player.

PLAYBOY: What about the cops?

RICHARDS: The cops had disappeared; they didn't wanna know shit. There were too many people and they weren't prepared for it. As far as they were concerned, one kid got born there, one died there, so there was the same amount of people who came out as went in. They said, "Well, we look at the ticket numbers--you mean you didn't charge for the baby?" It was chaos. "What children do is grow you up, make you think, What the hell am I gonna leave behind?"

PLAYBOY: You may have been a civilizing influence at Altamont, but many judges have thought you the Devil incarnate. You were arrested for drug possession at Redlands in 1967 and in Aylesbury in 1973. In 1977, you were arrested in Toronto. Do you think it was because of the drugs or because of your popularity that you were arrested?

RICHARDS: The drugs were the excuse. The reason was the effect they felt we had on the rest of the population. To me, before 1967, drugs had been grass or hash and amphetamines.

They're nothing I'd recommend to anybody, drugs, but a musician's life----It's very difficult to get anyone to understand. It's an underworld life, anyway. Musicians start to work when everybody else stops working and wants some entertainment. If you get enough work, you're working three hundred and fifty days a year, because you want to fill up every gig. And you reach a point very early on where you're sitting around in a dressing room with some of the other acts in the show and you say, "I've gotta drive five hundred miles and do two shows tomorrow and I can't make it." And you look around at the other guys and say, "How the hell have you been making it for years?" And they say, "Well, baby, take one of these."

Musicians don't start off thinking, We're rich and famous; let's get high. It's a matter of making the next gig. Like the bomber pilots--if you've got to bomb Dresden tomorrow, you get, like, four or five bennies to make the trip and keep yourself together. And then it was legal. That's how it starts out and it's usually speed. But the audience got into the same bag, and not for the same reasons. The musicians would be very happy if it were still elitist, dressing-room shit.

But it became an issue. People started to write songs about the stuff and sing about it and advocate it. And the rest of us are going, "Oh, man, unhip!" You don't let that shit out of the dressing room. But suddenly, in a matter of a few months, it's become a major way of life. Then they want to look for somebody to blame and, of course, we set ourselves up. "Would you let your daughter marry a Rolling Stone?" We were easy meat. At least they thought we were.

PLAYBOY: And you showed them you weren't by attacking your own judge. What was jail like?

RICHARDS: First off, neither the accommodations nor the fashion suited me a-tall. I like a little more room, I like the john to be in a separate area and I hate to be woken up. So a jail's nowhere to be.

PLAYBOY: You were kicked out of England on tax-evasion charges. If you were living in England, would they still try to bust you?

RICHARDS: Aw, no, no. I think the reason we got forced out was they realized it was pointless. They were showing their own weakness, a country that's been running a thousand years worried about a couple of guitar players and a singer. Do me a favor! They started to look bad. Specially when they hit John Lennon. After they'd given him an M.B.E., they tried to bust him! That's when you realize how fragile our little society is. But the government allowed that fragility to show. They let us look under their skirts--ooh, just another pussy, you know? Sending the Stones out to fend for themselves was like, "Pay up and go broke and live here, or fuck off."

To me, there was no choice; I'd rather fuck off. Why not? I mean, I love England, and it's my country. If you're forced to stay out too long and you go back, you feel like D. H. Lawrence. He said, "I feel more an alien here than anywhere else." I go back to London now, I see fuckin' Nelson's column and it's white marble. It was always covered in soot and shit. I don't mind--it's wonderful, clean it up. But, to me, it's such a shock to see Nelson's column white instead of fucking charcoal gray and black. It's unbelievable.

PLAYBOY: Your involvement with drugs was well known. Did you ever think you were going past your own point of no return?

RICHARDS: I always felt I had a safe margin. But that's a matter of knowing yourself--maybe just on a physical level. I come from very tough stock and things that would kill other people don't kill me.

In the Sixties, we were actually trying to do something by taking a few chemicals and making this historical wrench. It came down to mundane things like hair and clothes and music--but the ideal behind it was very pure. Everybody at that point was prepared to use himself as a sort of laboratory to find some way out of this mess. And it was very idealistic and very destructive at the same time for a lot of people.

The down side of it now is that people think drugs are entertainment. But the cats they look up to who died of drugs--and even me, who was supposed to die but didn't, yet!--we weren't takin' drugs just for fun, for recreation. Creation, maybe. It's all too complicated for me.

PLAYBOY: A lot of people in our generation who did drugs are now terrified that their own kids may do the same. It scares them to see their kids taking those chances, thinking of themselves as----

RICHARDS: Indestructible. You have to when you're young. That's the drive that gets you into life. But when you grow up and have a kid, you think about a lot of things. It changes your life, your thinking. The kid is your little thing, and you think, Goddamn, I helped make that. And it's all full of purity and innocence, and it's just smilin' at you and wants to kiss you and hug you, and all it wants to do is just feel you and touch you, and you never felt so loved in your life. It's that bit of love you gave your own parents, the bit you don't remember--your kid gives that back to you. And you realize, "I've just been given the first two or three years of my life back."

It's a vital piece of knowledge; it's like a missin' piece in a jigsaw puzzle. You should keep that, instead of showin' them off--"Hey, I made this"--because they made you. It's a reverse thing, because they give you that little bit, that important bit of living when you absolutely don't know shit about nothing. Every thing's a positive. 'Cause once you start to remember things--from that moment you've gotta start makin' judgments. But in that early period, that first year or two, you can be whoever you want to be, the freest bird on this planet, just as if you were born a mole or an eagle, a jackal, a lion, a gnu--gnash yer teeth--or anything.

What children do to you is grow you up, make you think, What the hell am I gonna leave behind when I'm gone? It's throwing them into a fucking cauldron of pollution and fear. But a lot of people don't take any notice of their kids; they just think of them as a possession, or something like, "I fucked up that night; I forgot to pull out," and, "OK, we can do plenty more; if that one fucks up, we can have another one." We can be incredibly callous about ourselves. There are so many of us, and the forces of nature are relentless.

You watch ants work--any other form of life--if we weren't here, this ball would roll very neatly and smartly for a lot longer. Which makes you think that maybe you don't belong here. We've put everything into gettin' off. Even though it's probably paradise. None of the other choices so far look to me as attractive as this joint, but we're ready to suck it dry and shit on it in order to get a few off. We're just bigger ants. We're all gonna self-destruct, so put Adam and Eve out there on another trip. We've managed to perform this act in a few thousand years, the blink of an eye in evolution. You can look at it two ways: We're the joker in the pack or we're the little grain of sand that makes a pearl out of an oyster.

PLAYBOY: Isn't that the function of art, to make a pearl out of the oyster?

RICHARDS: But no other form of life on the surface of the planet needs art. That already makes us weird, as if it points a finger: "This place doesn't need them." This is why we're the only form of life on this planet that needs religion, that will actually kill one another over some abstract idea. We are totally at odds with the plants--apparently, they like a bit of music now and again; they've grown to like it--but we're the only ones willing to destroy the whole joint. We're sucking everything out of the ground, pushin' all this shit up in the air. We're lucky if the jet stream comes back next year and if the fuckin' ozone layer doesn't close itself over real soon. We've all had it, anyway; this is a global problem now. It's not like we don't know it. We know it. We're so fucking smart. We know it, but we can't stop ourselves. It's better to us to beat the other guy than it is to make things comfortable.

That's the dichotomy between this planet and ourselves. We own it, we think. So did the dinosaurs at one time, and look what happened to them. This thing's gonna beat us, if we think we own it. I don't see any hope for us, quite honestly. And I'm saying to myself, I love my kids, what the hell am I puttin' them on the face of this planet for? Cut my dick off. And at the same time, I look at those girls in the morning when they wake up: "Good morning, Daddy, give me a big kiss"--I need this now, but what am I really giving them?

We're fucking up not only the earth but the layers that circle the earth, the bits we don't understand. They've made holes with all that pollution--what's gonna warm us up? And even if you stopped it now--and they're not gonna stop it now; it'll probably be, like, twenty years--it's like permafrost, it seeps down, keeps warming and warming for years and years. So that's not my problem, it's God's--"I love thee, Ocean."

PLAYBOY: We may be God's problem.

RICHARDS: Yeah. The only thing about the in-His-own-image thing is, who'd want to look like this?

PLAYBOY: Do you think the problem comes down to original sin?

RICHARDS: If I knew what other original sin was, I would do it and let you know.

PLAYBOY: We meant original sin in the sense that people seem so perverse, so naturally willing to hurt one another. How can anything stop it?

RICHARDS: The interesting thing about music is that it has always seemed streaks ahead of any other art form or any other form of social expression. I've said this a million times, but after air, food, water and fucking, I think music is maybe the next human necessity.

The myth in the Sixties was that it was more than entertainment. But music is the best communicator of all. And I doubt that anybody would disagree, if they thought about it, that a lot of the reason you've got some sort of--I don't know whether you wanna call it togetherness--anyway, some major shifts in superpower situations in the past few years probably has a lot to do with the past twenty years of music.

PLAYBOY: There always is that wonderful subversive quality about rock and roll, isn't there?

RICHARDS: It's like the walls of Jericho again.

PLAYBOY: You had the honor of inducting Chuck Berry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. What stands out in your mind from that night?

RICHARDS: Watching the jam at the Hall of Fame after the awards with Chuck Berry. I went down to St. Louis to meet with Chuck and talk about our deal over the movie I helped him with-- Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll. You know, don't hit me again, Chuck, because this time, you ain't gonna get away with it. There's a limit to hero worship.

PLAYBOY: When did Chuck hit you?

RICHARDS: Oh, a couple a years ago, Chuck was leaving a New York night club. I walked up behind him and said, "Don't rush off." He turned and sucker-punched me. I'd known Chuck for twenty years before the movie and the best thing he'd ever said to me was, "Fuck off." So when he hit me in the eye, I thought, Maybe he's really serious.

PLAYBOY: He had something serious to communicate?

RICHARDS: Yeah. So at his pad, Chuck played me a video tape that he and a friend had shot of the whole Rock and Roll Hall of Fame jam session. Now, in his house, Chuck Berry has one of those video projection machines with two big screens. One constantly plays the Playboy Channel--these chicks leaping around with their tits out, throwing custard pies at one another and, like, falling over logs and shit--while the other screen plays whatever Chuck wants to look at. But the Playboy Channel is always there; he can always go to the white tail.

PLAYBOY: The man has taste.

RICHARDS: The cat's got stereo. On one side he put on this hall-of-fame video and it's rocking. Chuck said, "Listen to that, Jack!" He always called me Jack.

PLAYBOY: You did the musical work for the movie partly at your house in Jamaica. How did Chuck like your house?

RICHARDS: He almost went into contortions, like heart attacks. Very nervous. If you're not on Chuck's patch, baby, if Chuck ain't in control of every situation, he's like a fish out of water. It started at the airport when I picked him up. He can't stand even not driving; that's why he drives himself everywhere.

If it's his patch, he'll maneuver and manipulate anything, 'cause he can pull the switch at any time. It was very like workin' with Mick: that siege mentality, like, "Nobody is gonna get the better of me, even if I don't have fun." That's the price you pay for saying, "Nobody is gonna smirk behind my back thinking they ripped me off." Fuck, millions of people ripped me off, and I don't give a shit. If you can't get over that, you have a problem. So in a way, I was well equipped to deal with Chuck. Even afterward, the cat still fascinates me. I find him more appealing now that I know him better than just hittin' me in the eye or sayin', "Fuck off."

I was given the opportunity to fulfill my own selfish teenage dreams. If I could just be the cat playing the guitar behind Chuck Berry, I thought. I'll have to swallow a lot of shit, probably on camera, to do this. But if I can do it, I'll show that about myself. If I can go through that fire, it will harden me up to the point where I can do my own record alone.

All those things--if you dream them, they'll come true, if you stick at it and hang in for the course.

PLAYBOY: Looking down the line, what changes would you like to see in the Stones?

RICHARDS: I would like to see a little more energy and balls out of the boys. I would like to see a little more happiness out of all of them just to be one of the Rolling Stones. Either you is or you ain't. If you is, you're gonna work with the Stones, and if you ain't, then forget it.

PLAYBOY: The work you've been doing appears to agree with you, and so does marriage.

RICHARDS: Patricia is an amazing girl. When I met her, I was reliving a second rock-and-roll childhood. I could have gone back. Easy. It could have gone either way for me, life or death.

PLAYBOY: The future looks encouraging. It's nice we had this little chat. We've sat here and killed a whole bucket of ice.

RICHARDS: Yeah, but there is a terrible tendency nowadays--I'm sounding like an old man now--to pose. All of us. It only reaffirms my belief that the music business, in any given era, is ninety-eight percent crap. If you know that and can avoid the posing bit, it's not going to hurt you. You might not get anything much out of it, you might totally fail making it, as they call it. But it's not going to hurt you to go for that two percent. But go for the other ninety-eight and you're lost. Bye-bye, brother. ......................................... And a Few More Riffs from Keith. . . . further thoughts on mick, friendship and self-defense

The long arm of Playboy caught up with Richards again in New York at the end of his solo tour--before his recent reteaming with Jagger. This time, it was journalist David Langsam, interviewing Richards for our Australian edition, who put the arm on him. Here's a quick once-over from down under.

PLAYBOY: How do you walk around Manhattan?

RICHARDS: If someone says, "It's him!" I either run for it or ease through, giving thanks and an autograph. There's a tremendous amount of good will for me in this town. I've had muggers come up to me and suddenly stop. "Er, can I have your autograph? We don't want to fuck with you man." Because I also have this fearsome image, which worries them. They never know if I'm going to pull out an Uzi.

PLAYBOY: Do you have an Uzi?

RICHARDS: No, I don't like semi-automatics.

PLAYBOY: What do you carry with you for a gentle walk down Broadway?

RICHARDS: A big stick. My preferred weapon is a Smith & Wesson .38.

PLAYBOY: The relationship between you and Mick--currently off--continues to puzzle the entire world.

RICHARDS: You don't think it puzzles me? Our difference is that we can't get divorced. Even if Mick and I never did another stroke of work together in our lives, we'd still have to live with each other. Just on a business level, we'd still have to face each other. . . . I'll always be his friend . . . but to me. . . . You see, Michael, he doesn't put as much store by friendship and loyalty as I do. To me, one of the best things you can get out of life is to have friends. If you can count more friends than you've got fingers, then you're really lucky. Luckily, I can start on my toes. And I don't know if Mick can. I don't know if Mick can fill a hand.

PLAYBOY: Mick helped you through your bad patches. Do you think he may need your help now?

RICHARDS: I don't think he thinks he needs anybody's help. But I wonder if he's realized that he's way out on a limb. I feel like I'm his only friend. I know the way he lives. I know everybody else who knows him. I know that Charlie Watts dished him out a great fucking right hook and that was Charlie Watts saying, "You and I have had it." It was '84 or '85, and Mick was wearing my jacket at the time. It really pissed me off. Charlie punched him into a plateful of smoked salmon and he almost floated out the window along the table into a canal in Amsterdam. I just grabbed his leg and saved him from going out. Meanwhile, my jacket, my favorite jacket, got ruined. Why did I lend him that jacket?

PLAYBOY: What was the fight about?

RICHARDS: It was about absolutely nothing. I had taken Mick out for a drink in Amsterdam, so at five in the morning, he came back to my room. He's drunk by now. Mick drunk is a sight to behold. Charlie was fast asleep. "Is that my drummer? Why don't you get your arse down here?" Charlie got dressed--in a Savile Row suit, tie, shoes--shaved, came down, grabbed him and went boom! "Don't ever call me 'your drummer' again. You're my fucking singer."

That was Charlie's way of saying, "It's over, man." It went really downhill after that. If there was one other friend Mick had, it was Charlie. On top of that, Mick was very stupid. He forgave Charlie. There's nothing to forgive. Nothing left to forgive.

PLAYBOY: Did you see Ron Wood's art exhibition in London? He has a portrait of Jagger that's terrible.

RICHARDS: Hey, Ronnie does a good job, man.

PLAYBOY: No, he doesn't. There was a picture of Jagger that could have been done by anyone off the sidewalk. He worked with Jagger for ten years and he has no character in the picture.

RICHARDS: There's very little character in Jagger. It's very lifelike. He captured him. Nobody at home.

PLAYBOY: Are the days of the Rolling Stones' making the top ten in the charts behind us?

RICHARDS: I don't know. Let's find out. To me, the interesting thing is the not knowing. I think the Stones have some great records left in them. As long as they want to put their backs into it. As long as they don't approach it from the last-big-kill or superstar-arrogance angle--I don't think I could stand it. I don't see Charlie Watts or Ronnie Wood approaching it like that. I have certain reservations about Mick and Bill Wyman in that respect. I think they take it for granted that people love the shit that comes out of their arseholes, quite honestly. And that makes me feel very squeamish. It's horrific to me that I could think that I'm above and beyond anybody else. I'm just a guitar player. .........................................