- [Crew Member] Okay, this is Keith; take 1.
(clapper clacks)
("Can't You Hear Me Knocking" by The Rolling Stones)
- [Chrissie] Every guy I've ever met in my life
wants to be Keith Richards.
- [Brian] He is the epitome of a rock guitarist.
The original, the one and only, it's Keith Richards.
♪ Yeah, you got satin shoes ♪
- [Narrator] Keith Richards has led a life
wreathed in legend.
♪ Yeah, you got ♪
- [Narrator] His attitude and legacy
underpin the whole idea of the guitar hero.
♪ Y'all got ♪
- What job is it of mine to go around wondering
what other people's perceptions are?
I have enough dealing with my own.
♪ Yeah, you got speed freak jive ♪
- I can only imagine what delusions
other people labour under.
Hah. ♪ The window ♪
- [Narrator] More than just a musician,
he's a defiant hedonist
and a poster boy for sheer survival.
- [Lars] Rock and roll has to have an element of danger
and an element of unpredictability.
And when you look at Keith Richards,
he embodies every element that you want
in your rock and roll star.
- [Don] Keith is all about living your life
with no one telling you how to be.
It's following who you are, fearlessly.
- It's really the skin of the teeth
first off, that it happens to you,
then you've got to survive it
because you don't know what you're in for
when you start this thing.
I still don't.
It's only surprises.
(laughs)
(saxophone ululating) (crowd cheering)
(bluesy guitar strumming)
I could kid myself that I was obviously born
to play rock and roll and be an enormous star.
No, I dreamt of that, but that doesn't...
That's not the same thing as knowing, is it?
Do we call that destiny?
What do we call it?
I call it love.
(laughs)
- [Glyn] There isn't another guitar player
like Keith Richards.
There's nobody who comes anywhere close to him.
- [Tina] It was that sound of the guitar.
And the sound of that guitar
was the creation, I would say, of the Rolling Stones.
- [Slash] He is definitely the archetypal bad boy,
rock guitarist personified,
and he's the model that all of us
rebellious rock guitar players follow from.
- [Sheryl] Keith Richards wrote the dictionary version
of what rock and roll was.
A songwriter, a guitar slinger, a traveling troubadour.
- He's such an encyclopedia.
If you need any advice, just go to Keith.
No matter what state he's in, he'll boom,
go straight to the heart of something.
"Oh, okay, that's the answer."
Keith has the answer.
- [Tom] Keith is just something else.
He's emotionally very present,
as present as you can be
when you're really in the business of fantasy.
- [Don] Say, you're a rock and roll fan as a teenager,
you have five kids
and you have to go to work at the assembly line
for the Ford Motor Company,
well, if you go to a Stones show
and Keith is standing there looking badass,
you're visiting the part of you that you feel is missing.
- [Narrator] After 60 years, the Stones are still rolling,
playing sell-out shows in all four corners of the globe.
But at the musical heart of every gig is one key character.
- [Mick] I think everyone creates
a character for themselves, to a certain extent.
I don't know whether Keith's created a character of himself
which is real or not real.
Keith's got a reputation as a hell raiser,
so I think he was very worried, at one point,
if he was no longer gonna be a hell raiser,
he's not that character anymore, who are you then?
I don't think he cares about that anymore.
I don't blame him.
- [Interviewer] Are you comfortable
doing interviews like this?
I mean, you've been doing them for a long time.
Is it something you relish?
- It depends on the interviewer, old boy.
I don't mind, you know.
I mean, I must say, now and again, it's a grind,
answering the same questions.
At the same time, that's a challenge
because you think, "Can I come up with another answer
"that means the same thing in different words?"
so you just slip and slide.
- [Tom] If you have a persona,
it is like a ventriloquist act,
it's sitting on your lap but it's not you.
I guess you could call it convenient at times,
but there are also other times when it's very inconvenient.
- We are all hand-in-glove
in this dastardly scheme to sell our products.
But I consider it as part of the gig.
So there we go, story so far.
- [Reporter] Why are you coming to see the show?
Who are you going to see?
- [Concert-Goer] Keith Richards, Keith Richards.
- I like his hair.
- [Reporter] Just his hair?
- [Concert-Goer] I just like him.
- [Narrator] Life in the spotlight
hasn't always been easy for Keith.
- [Mick] He's terribly shy.
I mean, as I knew him when he was a child
and growing up to be a teenager,
I know what he's really, really like.
No one else knows him from that period
except for me, I think.
You can see from the interviews,
he's introverted, naturally.
- I don't know how to define shyness.
I don't know, when it comes to shyness,
I don't really know where to put it.
I mean, I sometimes I think I use it as a weapon
and say "I'm shy."
And I guess, in a way, you get shy of things,
crowds and stuff, because I can't go to a movie,
to a cinema anymore.
Sometimes when I have,
I've never felt more embarrassed in my life.
There's somebody going,
"It's Keith Richards, it's Keith Richards."
I've ruined the whole movie for everybody, right?
Then I go "Oh, excuse me," tripping over people.
"I'll leave now."
I get shy in that situation,
and that just comes with fame and all of that crap,
which throws another load of stuff at you.
- If you're an extrovert in show business,
I think you're in a good place.
If you're an introvert in show business,
it will cause you probably some anguish,
or discomfort perhaps, or anxiety.
- [Chrissie] Most people that are in bands, guitar players,
maybe they're a little introverted, they're a bit awkward,
they can't talk to girls.
Even Jimi Hendrix would just be
at the back of the class, mumbling,
but give him a guitar and the world lights up.
- [Tina] Keith didn't care, in the beginning,
about clothes or about his image.
He was just concerned with the sound.
This was his way of performing.
He was back there making the sound.
- [Narrator] Keith was born in 1943.
18 miles east of London in Dartford, Kent.
- I understand that you two
of all the five fellas,
you two have been friends longest, is that right?
You've known each other, went to school together?
- Yes. - We were little lads.
- Oh, when we were little boys.
- Little-bitty boys. - Yes.
- And you were raised around London, right?
- Yes. - Yes.
- [Reporter] Is it in London itself, or...
- No, just outside, about 20 miles.
- In the suburbs. - In the suburbs of London.
- [Reporter] What's the suburb called?
- Dartford.
- [Reporter] Dartford.
- You're right on the edge of the country,
so you've got you know, commuters, heavy industry
and you've got countryside, very beautiful,
still very beautiful.
The Dickensian sort of marshes
that go to the Thames Estuary
described in "Great Expectations" so fully.
- [Keith] Dartford, is that on the planet Krypton?
(engines droning)
You were growing up in the residue of a huge world war,
but you didn't know anything about it.
It was just the way things were.
Bombsite here.
"No, you can't have that,
"we don't have any ration tickets left."
I mean, it wasn't unusual, you didn't feel hard done by,
it was just the way it was.
- The exam, called the 11+, looms large,
sorting British kids into the different educational paths
which will determine their future.
- I remember the 11+, I didn't take it.
I went down with some kind of flu at the time
or whatever it was, and so I didn't actually get to take it,
which I was immense...
I think I had a psychosomatic disease.
I just, "Exams are the thing that will kill me," you know?
I mean it's...
Jesus.
You either became a professional, basically, of whatever,
or you dug the ditches and you do what working men do.
And of course, being kids like that, you don't realize
that you're being streamed into one aspect of society.
You're being dumped or you're being elevated.
You have no idea, right?
Anyway, I took the middle route and got expelled.
And which I recommend heartedly
to any red-blooded English schoolboy.
As far as I was concerned,
it only heaped humiliation on me
and I weren't going to take it anymore, you know?
You break it with one form of authority
and maybe after that you start to question
other forms of authority.
There was always something about being told what to do,
especially without any reason.
- [Narrator] If rebel Keith is born
of a healthy disregard for authority,
it's his grandfather, Gus Dupree, an amateur jazz musician,
who fosters an early enthusiasm for music.
(uptempo chiming music)
- [Keith] He was the father of seven daughters
who, as far as I'm concerned,
I seem to have been the only boy he didn't have.
So in fact, to me he was more like a dad
or a friend than a grandfather.
He'd take me into music shops,
but we'd always go in round the back,
we never went in the front door.
And there was always a little deal about
some guitar strings or some violin strings.
But then I would be in the back of these music stores
for like hours, watching people make guitars,
violins, repairing things.
It was like magical stuff going on.
He always had his violin and instruments all ready.
He never ever once pushed me or tried to interest me,
he would just play music, all kinds, jazz, classical.
And then we'd just live our life around the music
until one day he noticed that I was looking at the guitar
on top of the piano.
"Since you keep looking at that," he said.
"Do you want to have a go?"
And that's how, bom, he gave it to me.
He said "I'll show you a few chords here,
and you're on your own."
And that was it.
- [Interviewer] Can we just talk about your first guitar?
I think we've got it here.
I'd love to see you handle it.
- So would I!
- [Interviewer] That's all you need to do, okay.
- [Keith] What the fuck!
Oh, that's it.
Oh, man.
Yeah, the mice were at then,
the mice have been at it now.
This...
I believe, is the one that my grandfather gave me,
but I'm not sure about that really, but...
(strings twang out a melody)
Definitely my grandfather.
(laughs)
Wow, you see?
Lovely piece of wood!
(electric guitar twangs)
♪ Oh Maybellene ♪
♪ Why can't you be true ♪
♪ Oh Maybellene ♪
- [Narrator] As Keith starts out on his musical journey,
his attention is grabbed by an irresistible new sound:
Rock and roll.
♪ As I was motivatin' over the hill ♪
I saw Maybellene in a Coupe de Ville
♪ Cadillac rollin' on open road ♪
♪ Nothin' outrun my V8 Ford ♪
- I was getting an urge
for some country music and some blues.
I was starting to get interested.
Very little that you could get in England at the time.
I think when rock and roll came along,
it sort of fused the whole thing together for me.
Hah, you know, "Where have you been?"
♪ Cadillac pulled up at 104 ♪
- At that age, it was devastating.
♪ It done got cloudy and started to rain ♪
♪ I tooted my horn for the passin' lane ♪
♪ Rain water blowin' all under my hood ♪
- That's it, that's where you're wanna go, that's it.
"Book me a room!"
(chuckles)
It was an exciting time to be a musician at that age.
Yeah, it was great.
♪ Started back doin' the things you used to do ♪
(guitar twanging)
- [Glyn] It was so completely different
from anything we'd ever heard.
And it had an excitement
and a positivity about it, I suppose.
Rock and roll started whenever it was, '58.
It was Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly
and all that lot that turned our heads.
That introduced us more into folk, I suppose,
and then into blues,
and the blues artists of the day,
it was like collecting rare stamps,
finding good blues records.
(audience claps enthusiastically)
- The hits were released by major record companies.
So if it was a hit R&B track
or if it made the Hot 100,
these were easy to get.
Major labels released these records.
To buy the whole album of Muddy Waters
was much more difficult,
and you had to go to a jazz shop in Charing Cross Road
and pay a lot of money for it.
And we used to order them from America a bit cheaper.
And there was a sort of little network of people
that had record collections
and so you would go to their houses
and they would play you music,
and you would hear songs perhaps you'd never heard before.
- [Keith] I was going to Sidcup Art School
and Mick, at that time, was going to
the London School of Economics.
But I'd just get off at Sidcup, you know.
Meanwhile I'm sitting in the carriage
and suddenly who walks in, it's Mick,
who I hadn't seen in years, you know.
"Wow, man, what's that under your arm?"
And he pulls out "The Best of Muddy Waters"
and "Rocking at the Hops" by Chuck Berry.
And these are American pressings
and you can't get these records in England at the time.
Basically, that was the hook-up for the Stones
and for Mick and I,
was just that we had the same interest in music.
(electric guitar strumming)
(static crackling)
(blues harmonica wailing)
- [Taj] To know that these guys were dedicated enough
to send their money off into the oblivion
in the hopes that something would come back,
and then they would like obsess
and live off of that record,
I just think it's just phenomenal.
What was it about a cricket-playing,
football-playing bunch of characters
who drank tea at 4 o'clock, who loved this music?
- [Don] Music from other cultures
has a romantic flair and is kinda exotic.
So for the Rolling Stones, being teenagers in England,
getting their hands on authentic American blues records,
authentic American folk records, country records,
it carried with it this whole romantic gravitas.
- The thing about the blues
is it felt like it was coming from some other place.
And it's much more raucous, it's much more heart-felt,
it's much more vivacious,
it's not being filtered through all these things.
- That's what kind of made us jealous in England.
As I say, "Man, these cats have got,
"they've got a long stretch on us
"and there's a lot of catching-up to do."
- It was just a fascinating journey,
and as presumptuous 18 year old white kids would say,
"We're gonna be the best blues band in London."
(teens screaming)
- [Brian] Robert Plant said it to me best,
he said "You know, Brian, these white boys
"got a hold of American black music and gave it fist."
- The Rolling Stones! (cheers erupt)
♪ Say the joint was a-rockin' ♪
♪ Going round and round ♪
♪ Yeah, reelin' and rockin' ♪
♪ What a crazy sound ♪
♪ But they never stop rockin' ♪
- [Marshall] I saw that whole thing go down, man,
with the white blues.
The English were ahead of it.
They spread it.
♪ I rose out of my seat ♪
- [Don] There was something really different about it.
♪ Just had to dance ♪
- [Don] There was like this undulating rhythm happening
and it was sexually charged.
♪ Say the joint was a-rockin' ♪
♪ Going round and round ♪
♪ Yeah, reelin' and rockin' ♪
♪ What a crazy sound ♪
♪ And they never stopped rockin' ♪
♪ Till the Moon went down ♪
- [Keith] You're 18 and you're playing your blues,
and within a matter of months,
women are trying to tear your clothes off
and they're jumping off of balconies.
This is not quite what I had in mind.
It was mayhem.
(teens screaming)
- [Joe] They were really good.
My god!
As a band, they were really good.
♪ Yeah the place was packed ♪
♪ And when the police knocked ♪
- [Joe] They had this charisma.
They were so cool and really didn't give a fuck.
That was their attitude on stage.
♪ Reelin' and a-rockin' ♪
♪ What a crazy sound ♪
♪ But you never stopped rockin' ♪
♪ Till the Moon went down ♪
♪ Said the joint was a-rockin' ♪
♪ Going round and round ♪
♪ Yeah, reelin' and a-rockin' ♪
♪ What a crazy sound ♪
♪ But you never stopped rockin' ♪
♪ Till the Moon went down ♪
- [Bob] The Stones represented a danger,
a teenage danger that we hadn't really experienced before.
- [Don] They were definitely different
than, say, the Beatles.
The Beatles were there to entertain you.
These guys came for your daughters.
(chuckles)
- [Narrator] The Rolling Stones connect
with a post-war generation eager for new music.
But the key to their success is a reverence
for a blues sound steeped in history.
(bluesy guitar strumming)
- [Keith] We did it through researching,
getting really soaked up in the blues.
We wanted to find out where the funkiest,
swampiest damn stuff came from.
- [Don] Keith Richards' choice of listening music
is a great musicology course for anybody.
("Hobo Blues" by John Lee Hooker)
- [Bob] He had a sort of evangelical drive
to expose people to the blues.
♪ When I first thought to hobo'in, hobo'in, boy ♪
♪ I took a freight train to be my friend, oh Lord ♪
- [Lisa] We would have a lot of listening sessions
in Keith's room, with just all this great black music,
and I think the Rolling Stones
were actually tapping into that...
♪ You know I hobo'd, hobo'd, hobo'd ♪
- [Lisa] and expressing it in their way...
is the evolution of the music as it should be.
♪ Oh yeah ♪
- [T Bone] I think the whole wave of music
that came out of England in the mid-1960s
was a reflection of the best
of what we had cooked up over here over the last 50 years.
♪ Long time ago ♪
(blues guitar strumming)
- [T Bone] They embraced it in the most beautiful way.
They honored that music.
♪ I left home that mornin' ♪
♪ My mother followed me down to that ♪
- [Keith] Being in America to find out
that what we'd heard in England
was only the tip of an iceberg
and that you could burrow far deeper,
and that, for every guy that you knew about,
there were 10 others, easily as good.
- [Lisa] The music and the beat and the sounds
came from the motherland.
The black experience that is soulful,
that has a cry, that has a deep understanding,
that touches hearts, that communicates deeply.
(humming)
The Rolling Stones took it and ran and made it their own.
♪ Next time I start to hoboin' ♪
♪ I'm gonna have my baby by my side ♪
♪ And then you know my night ♪
♪ Ain't gonna be so alone ♪
- We were just a bunch of guys that loved our music,
were obsessed with our music,
but in our English fantasy of America in the '50s,
it just sort of pulled you and called you.
It was the place to be if you wanted to be a musician.
- Now, something for the youngsters.
Five singin' boys from England
who've sold a lot of albums,
they're called the Rolling Stones.
I've been rolled while I was stoned myself.
(audience laughs)
so I don't know what they're singing about, but
(audience laughs)
here they are!
(audience claps)
♪ I don't want you be no slave ♪
♪ I don't want you work all day ♪
♪ But I want you to be true ♪
♪ And I just wanna make love to you, baby ♪
♪ Love to you, baby ♪
♪ Sweet love to you, baby ♪
♪ Love to you, yeah I can ♪
♪ Tell by the way that you twitch and walk ♪
♪ I can see by the way that you baby talk ♪
- [T Bone] The Rolling Stones sang our music back to us
but they were singing with us.
I never felt that they were singing to us.
I felt like they wanted to be one of us.
I welcomed them.
I think we all welcomed them.
♪ I don't want you make my bed ♪
♪ I don't want you to be true ♪
♪ I just wanna make love to you, baby ♪
♪ Love to you, baby ♪
♪ Sweet love to you, baby ♪
♪ Love to you, baby ♪
♪ I wanna make love to you ♪
(mournful guitar twanging)
- [Taj] I was really excited
that somebody felt in love with this music
as much as I did, and would dedicate their lives
to playing it and exposing people to it.
Some people thought they might have been appropriating
or this, that, or the other thing.
"Well, excuse me, it's right here in your backyard
"and I don't see you doing anything about it."
- [Reporter] Because it's been said
that the Rolling Stones gave black music
back to the Americans.
How do you feel all these black musicians feel
about the Stones?
- I mean, I know people like Muddy Waters, et cetera,
are really grateful for...
Really, I mean, we did very little.
All we said was that we dug Muddy Waters
which happened to have a lot of an effect for him
in his own way.
It means more bread for him
because he got onto the white college circuit and things,
which wouldn't have happened and things like that.
But we weren't the only ones to do that.
Every English band in the '60s
that went to America, came there and said
"Well, we got our music from black records."
(guitar snarling) (fans screaming)
- [Keith] This is way beyond our dreams
of being the biggest R&B band in London.
Muddy Waters has suddenly got a hit record again.
John Lee Hooker is on the charts.
Slim Harpo, and all of these people
that were totally unknown two years before.
And we felt very proud of them.
I mean, Jesus, what a mantle we carried.
I still get a nice warm glow out of
turning everybody back onto their own stuff.
To find yourself on the bill with Muddy Waters,
"Whoo!
"Victory is ours!"
It was cool.
- [Narrator] A reworking of music that was already American
helps the Stones storm the States and the world.
In just a matter of months,
their sound and image are No.1
on both sides of the Atlantic.
(blues guitar twanging)
- [Keith] We felt that it was a gift, coming to America.
I mean, suddenly to be transplanted from some wannabe.
It was endlessly fascinating, America, after Dartford.
We grew into it and music grew into us.
And America changed rapidly in '64/'65.
White America, when we first came here,
was incredibly old fashioned to us.
Our idea of America was modernity.
And once you got out there in the sticks, whoa!
You realized the incredible gap there.
- [Bob] America was the Holy Grail, it really, really was.
And it was to do with not just wanting to be big in America,
it was more that their fame and notoriety
had given them an opportunity.
It was like a laminate, a pass into American culture.
And I think that was the thing with Keith.
He saw the Stones as this amazing laminate
into the fabric of what made American music what it was.
- [Keith] I think it's the call.
But the Americans were still playing folk songs
and folk music, basically through country music,
which always sounds like schmaltz
to a lot of people, I know,
but there's a lot of 'struth in country music.
("Wild Horses" by The Rolling Stones)
- [Don] I actually think that the Rolling Stones
are some of the first proponents
of what's now called Americana music.
It's ironic, but you listen to something like "Wild Horses",
that's a pretty eclectic blend
of authentic American music styles
that no one had really touched on before.
- [Sheryl] They've written some of the quintessential
country songs, as far as I'm concerned.
♪ Childhood living ♪
♪ Is easy to do ♪ - They're so much more
than an R&B band,
and they're also extremely brilliant pop song craftsmen.
♪ The things you wanted ♪ - I think they took
Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters
and George Jones and Merle Haggard
and brought it back to us with pop hooks.
I don't know that there is a band
that can write better hooks than the Rolling Stones.
- [Joe] I love that the Stones can do that,
that they can take stuff from their influences
and do it their way.
They translate it and do it their way.
That's another wonderful thing they've taught me,
is how to put a song together.
♪ Wild horses ♪
♪ Couldn't drag me away ♪
♪ Wild, wild horses ♪
♪ Couldn't drag me away ♪
- [T Bone] One of the things people don't talk about
or I don't hear talked about
is what a great songwriter Keith Richards is.
I think it's because he's so known as a guitarist,
and also because he's so known to be dissolute
or whatever that beautiful thing is that he is, you know,
that people I don't think have really recognized
the extraordinary contribution that he's made
through his song writing.
♪ The same ♪
- [Slash] I really remember a particular period
as a really little guy from "Beggars Banquet",
"Let It Bleed", "Sticky Fingers", "Exile on Main St.",
that was the period when the Stones
was the background music of my life.
- [Ronnie] It just kind of adds another thread
between this tapestry of this marvelous backlog
of material that the Stones have.
It's like, "Whoo! What a legacy!"
And lucky dip, take a song.
Pick it out.
- [Narrator] It soon becomes clear,
writing as well as performing smash hits
is the name of the game
if they want to be a new kind of musical superstar.
- We were working the clubs in London
and the Beatles just came out and had a hit, "Love Me Do",
and we said "Oh, man, what a great record."
- [Mick] The Beatles suddenly explode
and there you are going "Oh, yeah, but we're a blues band."
And the Beatles changed this whole thing.
- [Keith] And our job was to be
like the premiere rhythm and blues band in London
and we managed that.
(chuckles)
But we had no idea of progressing beyond that stage.
- Keith, he played the Beatles all the time.
It was driving me absolutely batty.
And why he was playing the Beatles
wasn't because he didn't want to listen to anything else.
Keith wanted to write these pop songs,
because we're undeniably the blues band,
but we knew we had to be a pop band.
- We were just envious too, man.
I mean, they're doing what we want, you know,
and they got it.
They can make records.
The Holy Grail was to make records,
to be able to get into a studio.
It was like diamonds.
You'd think it was a gold mine,
which, in a way, there was, you know what I mean?
But you'd think you were invading Fort Knox
just to make a record.
Without the Beatles, the Stones would never have been there.
The reason the Stones existed or made records
was because the record industry couldn't afford
to lose another Beatles.
We'd never got in a recording studio without them.
We would have sold our, and I probably did, sell my soul,
just to be on tape, just to get on record,
just to learn how records are made.
Recording is, and still is to me, a most mysterious art.
(blues guitar twanging)
- [Jane] I think he could live in a studio.
(chuckles)
He just loves music.
Music is always part of his life.
Music is always on.
Music is always the backdrop of his life
and the guitar is always there,
the piano is always there.
He always has it right handy, whenever he wants it.
But he loves the process.
I think he loves the process more than anything.
He loves developing a song.
He likes to write in a studio.
(blues piano music)
- [Keith] It's a kid's dream come true.
I mean, you are constantly living those moments of like,
"I've got a guitar strapped on, I'm in Studio 2,
"and we're cutting!"
And it is a surreal sensation, in a way.
- [Glyn] Keith would come to the studio
and he'd have maybe half an idea
and he'd sit and play it and play it
and play it and play it on his own,
and then when he'd got it almost into shape
Bill and Charlie would sit with him
and they'd play along with him
to help him develop the riff into a song.
- [Joe] The Stones have a great craft of song writing,
and that is how to present it,
how to record it so that it knocks your socks off
and you go, "Whoa!"
- [T Bone] What they've done is epic.
The way they were able to weave
these disparate elements together,
it's a magic trick.
- What you do is the job of a minstrel.
Songs evolve, music evolves.
- [Mick] Keith was not the purist of the band,
a blues purist.
Keith liked to write pop songs.
He wrote lots and lots of pop songs
"Ruby Tuesday", "As Tears Go By".
He also wrote "Angie".
I mean these are not blues songs as we know them.
These are pop songs
that emanate really from Keith, originally.
- [Narrator] Keith's talent drives the band's success.
♪ Ah yeah ♪
- [Narrator] But he's a reluctant star...
♪ I love just to tell ya ♪
- [Narrator] Struggling to handle the adoration
and fame that engulfs the band.
- [Keith] I'd have been quite happy
to make all these records totally anonymously.
But then, of course, that's not possible,
you know what I mean?
Hey, you've got to get out there and put yourself out,
and I learned how to do that,
and I quite enjoyed it.
But I guess my refuge was heroin,
was drugs,
and there I stayed as long as I could.
- [Mick] Keith Richards on guitar.
(bluesy guitar music) All right then, let's get on
♪ She drew out all her money out the Southern Trust ♪
♪ And put a little boy aboard a Greyhound bus ♪
♪ Leaving Louisiana for the Golden West ♪
- [Narrator] As his star rises,
keeping up with Keith in the 1970s becomes a deadly game,
and his addiction to heroin
ultimately threatens the future of the band.
♪ Bye bye, bye bye ♪
- [Chrissie] The thing is most people
are kind of shy and awkward
and they wouldn't have got on a stage
if they weren't loaded.
So it works in your favor in the initial years.
But when it starts working against you
and you get addicted to the drugs,
'cause they're addictive,
then you have a problem.
("Bye Bye Johnny" by The Rolling Stones)
♪ She finally got the letter she was dreamin' of ♪
(music distorts)
- [Keith] Everybody's got a different metabolism,
a different way of dealing with that amount of adoration.
I just felt that as long as I kept myself to myself
that there was no reason for them
to make any big fuss about it.
- [Narrator] Keith's transformation confirms him
as an international icon of rebellion
and a target for the authorities.
Late in the winter of '77,
Richards is in Toronto
where the Rolling Stones are set to perform.
- [Jane] We went to Toronto to do this concert.
I remember when the police were walking up the staircase
and wondering what that was all about.
- [Narrator] The day before,
Keith's girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg,
arrived at Toronto Airport,
and as the Canadian Police search her belongings,
they find her in possession of hashish.
An investigation begins that leads the police
all the way to Keith's hotel room.
- [Jane] Of course, he was found with drugs and heroin
and all that kinda stuff because he had a habit at the time,
and the history of the Rolling Stones changed on a dime.
- [Newsreader] The Rolling Stones
is one of the most famous rock groups in the world.
A week ago, lead guitarist Keith Richards
was charged with possession of heroin
for the purpose of trafficking.
- [Jane] It was actually terrifying,
'cause he realized he was up for,
it could be 20 years of prison.
- [Keith] I think the reason I was taking it
was how to deal with fame and pressure,
and it's one way to run away.
I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.
But there again, it's a person choice, I don't know.
And it's a rough old world
and sometimes you need something to blank it out.
And it probably ain't worth a ride.
It was the realization in Canada
that I was actually jeopardizing the band,
and if they were going to put me away,
I mean it was bye-bye, you know.
"If I get out of this
"and don't have to cold turkey in jail,
"I'm going to go and clean up."
- [Jane] He just made a commitment,
"I'm gonna get this together."
Because at that point, it was music or drugs,
and music was far more important than drugs.
- [Reporter] How do you think this conviction
is going to affect you and your music
and the Rolling Stones?
- Well, I don't know.
I just want to get on with it, now that it's over,
just get on with what I'm supposed to be doing,
instead of worrying about this.
- [Reporter] Do you think it will have any effect then?
- I don't know, might get a song out of it.
- [Man] House lights go, please, house lights go.
(crowd cheers) - Ladies and gentlemen!
The Rolling Stones! (crowd roars)
- [Narrator] It's not drugs, fashion or lifestyle choices
that will define Keith's story.
It's his talent,
that marks him out as one of the most important
and influential artists of our age.
- [Don] Keith is all about feel and instinct.
If he's writing a song, he may have two chords,
and he's perfectly happy to sit there
and play those two chords for two hours,
and he's just waiting for the next part of the song to come,
but he's not gonna force it.
He's gonna just keep playing this mantra
until something appears.
And it always does.
- [Keith] I really do like a striking intro to records,
especially a rock and roll record,
and I am talking about that particular format
that if an intro can grab you,
you're gonna be in for at least a few more minutes,
and if the riff behind that intro grabs you,
then you've pretty much got 'em.
("Gimme Shelter" by The Rolling Stones)
- [Glyn] If you listen to the Rolling Stones records,
Keith wrote some unbelievable intros.
♪ Oooh oooh oooh ♪
- [Joe] Every guitar player in the world went
"Wow! How did he do that?"
Well, he took off one string.
- [Keith] There's five strings.
I take the bottom string goes off,
and then you tune the rest of the strings
to the chord of G.
- [Tom] That tuning of his,
there's something menacing about that,
just to weave that in the center of the groove.
- [Joe] That is a brilliant guitar sound.
It says so much with so little.
Holy smokes!
- There is something about the intonation
of the notes, the separation and the point,
and I would say almost mystical
that when hit in the right way in the right moment,
a cheap ride to heaven.
♪ My very life today ♪
♪ If I don't get some shelter ♪
♪ Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away ♪
♪ War, children ♪
- Silence is your canvas for a musician,
and it's how much you fill in the canvas
and how much light you let through,
which is something you really don't know yet,
it's almost intuitive.
You do it by feel, really, on instinct.
(guitar twanging)
♪ Ooh, see the fire is sweepin' ♪
- [Bonnie] There's a Keith Richards sound
and a Keith Richards approach to the guitar
that just is unlike anything
that I've ever heard from anyone else.
There's a certain type of way that he plays
in the middle of the neck and a certain hammering, slashing.
♪ War, children, it's just a shot away ♪
- I just love riffs.
I just love a great connection of notes
that can repeat themselves over and over
without being monotonous, without being boring.
And that's what a good riff is.
It's the same old thing but it keeps changing.
- [Brian] People will still be trying to play
what he plays 50 years from now.
There won't be another.
- [Don] It's tough to characterize
Keith Richards' guitar playing.
I believe it's a really organic extension
of who he is, of his soul.
It's no different than speaking,
it's no different than walking.
It's just a musical manifestation of who he is.
And not all musicians are like that.
- Keith's always known what he wants on the guitar.
The way he plays is he establishes the sound first
with Pierre, his guitar tech,
and various ways of achieving the desired effect.
♪ Mm, this flood is threat'ning ♪
- This is where he picks.
It's so worn out that some of the dots have come out.
He's lost a tooth here.
But this actually looks scalloped but it's not,
it's just for how worn out it is.
He's actually wearing out the finger-board here,
and that's typical of where he strums up in this region.
It's great when you see the person
that you've listened to so many years ago
still having a relationship with their instrument.
You've got 5 strings, there's only 3 notes
because there's two doubles, two sets of Ds,
two sets of Gs and a B.
So the way it rings, the way certain things ring,
you don't hear that on a normal guitar.
It's definitely not about filling it up.
If you're still thinking about what you can add
instead of what you need to take away,
you're still at the beginning stages.
- I didn't want to be a guitar player,
I wanted to make noise,
and if it took using a guitar to do it, I'd do it.
I became a pretty good one in some respects.
And I suppose really I'm saying
that I use the guitar really as a percussion instrument.
It's a rhythm thing for me.
I do love playing solos,
but I've always have said to myself,
"Look, solos come and go, a riff lasts forever."
(laughs)
- Cut, you know, it sort of rounds it off.
Doesn't sound wrong if it doesn't rhyme.
That was a quick one, Andrew.
- [Andrew] Really?
(indistinct)
♪ Ba ba ba, ba-ba, ba-ba ba ba ♪
♪ Won't you love ♪
- Mick and I, in those days, used to sit around
with guitars and we'd write.
That's what we did.
♪ I know you find it hard ♪
♪ To reason at me ♪
♪ But this time it's different, girl ♪
♪ Darlin', you'll see ♪
♪ You gotta tell me you're comin' back to me ♪
- Writing songs and making records,
it's like a jigsaw puzzle.
There's always that thing of not quite knowing
what's going to come up next.
When it all locks into position,
it is quite an incredible sensation,
and everybody that's involved
in doing that when it's happening,
knows that, for a moment,
you're in a special place, a special time
and you feel,
actually, in a way, you feel very privileged
to actually be there.
- [Sheryl] Every great song is born of conversation.
It really takes the two of them
to create that synergy and that energy.
I mean, they're the perfect Yin and Yang.
Mick is the guy that brings it,
Keith is the guy that holds it down.
That rhythm is undeniable.
I mean, he's the guy that took Chuck Berry
and took Johnnie Johnson's whole thing
and brought it to a rock guitar in an open tuning.
You can write great songs with people,
but when there is a dynamic there
that's bigger than the two of you,
that's where the great stuff lives.
- [Jon] It's the kind of a band
that was built on "we", not "me".
It took the chemistry of all of them to make it work.
- [Mick] You can't say, "Oh, if I wrote 'Angie',"
It's like, "Listen to this," and Keith would say
"That's a load of shit, I wanna write blues."
No, it's the other way round.
It's Keith saying "Listen to this melody."
And I'm going, I could say,
"That's not the blues,
"that's bordering saccharine ballads."
But I didn't say that, of course,
it's a very beautiful song.
So what I'm trying to say is
that the Rolling Stones were many, many things.
And one of the good things about the Rolling Stones
is that they embrace a lot of kinds of music.
Yes, they're a blues band.
Yes, they're a rock band.
Yes, they did things like "Paint It Black".
Yes, they did like classic rock.
Yes, they did dance songs.
You have to push innovation a bit sometimes
because people get older,
they just want to stick at one thing.
- [Bob] I think with Mick and Keith,
over the years, they have an acceptance
and a total respect for each other,
in terms of what they both bring to the band.
And I think it's valid, actually,
to think that Mick has always been
the one driving them forward,
it's always been Keith that's been aware
of a credibility of the music they're making,
to make sure it continues to be rooted.
Keith had said "Listen, we are still this blues band,
"irrespective of the pyrotechnics
"and 200,000 people in the audience,
"we're still that band that played the Marquee
"in 1962 to 100 people".
That is Keith looking back
and holding onto that rare musical depth
and Mick propelling the band
into whatever the future may bring for them.
("Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones)
(audience chanting ooh-ooh)
- [Keith] If it comes out of the Rolling Stones,
it's the Rolling Stones.
Now and again, Mick and I have come up with a song
and then looked at each other and said,
"No, not the Stones; no, no."
♪ Please allow me to introduce myself ♪
♪ I'm a man of wealth and taste ♪
- [Narrator] There are few song writing partnerships
to match Jagger and Richards,
and despite their fair share of disagreements,
their relationship has endured against all the odds.
♪ And I was 'round when Jesus Christ ♪
♪ Had his moment of doubt and pain ♪
- [Slash] You had this image of those two guys
being the first real example
of a lead singer/lead guitar player relationship.
♪ Pleased to meet you ♪
♪ Hope you guess my name ♪
♪ What's puzzling you is just the ♪
♪ Nature of my game ♪
♪ Stuck around St. Petersburg ♪
- [Marshall] Mick wanted to be the leader.
He's the leader of the pack.
Keith doesn't give a fuck about being the leader
but he thinks he really is.
- [Jane] They're completely different.
Mick wants to try new things,
he is very much part of whatever's going on.
Keith is technophobic.
That is one of the things
that still makes the edge between them.
They all have separate lives,
separate identities,
and musically they're Yin and Yang.
- [Chuck] They're joined at the hip.
Has there been times when the disagreements have flared up?
Of course there has.
But I think you take a deep breath,
you look at each other and say,
"Wait a minute, last time I checked,
"the whole is greater than the sum of its parts."
♪ Ooh ooh ♪
- [Steve] Even at times when Mick and Keith
weren't at their best, relationship-wise,
I would dare you to get between them.
There's a bond there that can't be broken.
- [Keith] To do it for this long,
Mick and I both look at each other and say,
"We must be doing something right."
I don't know what it is.
The idea of turning people on for 60 years
is like whoa!
But the thing is relentless.
It's like being a juggernaut.
♪ Hope you guess my name ♪
♪ What's confusing you is just a ♪
- [Jane] You see them walk to the stage, these older guys,
and they climb the stairs.
Each stair, another piece of energy comes up,
and then they go out.
It's like a shot of lightning.
♪ As heads is tails ♪
♪ Call me Lucifer ♪
- [Jane] It's like going to Never-Never Land.
♪ 'Cause I'm in need of some restraint ♪
♪ So if you meet me ♪
♪ Have some courtesy ♪
♪ Sympathy, and some taste ♪
- [Joyce] The music comes first.
Writing, recording, performing music.
That's where they're at.
When they finally step off the stage for the last time,
we will all know that we shall never see
anything like that ever again.
♪ What's confusing y'all's just the ♪
♪ Nature of my game, yeah ♪
♪ Deliver ♪
♪ Ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Come on ♪
♪ Ooh ooh ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪
♪ Ooh ooh ♪
- [Keith] I mean, God knows what I'd have been like
if I didn't do this.
My wildest nightmare.
Really, all you wanted to do is play music,
trying to get it better,
trying to get the band tighter.
(crowd cheers)
- [Mick] Woo wooh!
- Not many people get a chance to do this
with thousands of people, as a job.
(crowd chanting and cheering)
When you're exchanging that much appreciation to each other,
it is profoundly touching.
Music is a resilient thing and sometimes I think,
"God, it's the only thing we've got
"that we can trust, you know?"
I gave up many years ago
trying to analyze this bunch
and why it works and how it works.
And I found the best remedy
is to put them altogether in a room and say,
"Hey, it goes like this.
"One, two, three, four!"
And all the problems go away.
(crowd chanting and cheering)