Quotes from Keith Richards

Charlie Watts's drums on "Street Fighting Man" are from this little 1930s practice drummer's kit, in a little suitcase that you popped up, one tiny cymbal, a half-size tambourine that served as a snare, and that's really what it was made on, made on rubbish, made in hotel rooms with our little toys.

Y, aún con todo, la gente quiere llegar al otro, al corazón del otro, por eso existe la música: si no eres capaz de decirlo, cántalo.

It was decreed that we should leave French territory until I was "allowed back," but I had to keep renting Nellcôte as some kind of bond, at $2,400 a week.

What you're looking for is power and force, without volume--an inner power. A way to bring together what everybody in that room is doing and make one sound. So it's not two guitars, piano, bass and drums, it's one thing, it's not five. You're there to create one thing.

Then the bass player would be battened off, so they were all in their little pigeonholes and cubicles. And you're playing this enormous room and not using any of it. This idea of separation is the total antithesis of rock and roll, which is a bunch of guys in a room making a sound and just capturing it. It's the sound they make together, not separated.

National Service] changes guys. I saw my older cousins, older friends who'd been through it. They'd come out different men, basically. Left right left right. That drill. It's brainwashing. You can do it in your goddamn sleep. Sometimes these guys did. Their whole mind changed, and their sense of what they were, what level they inhabited. […] A lot of steam seemed to have been taken out of them.

Spiderwoman stepped forward and said, "Oh, do give us a hint, just give us a glimmer." Mick turned to me and said, "We're the Glimmer Twins." Baptized on the equator, the Glimmer Twins is the name we used later for ourselves as producers of our own records.

We heard later that Gram was clean when he went overboard. He took a normal-sized dose. "Oh, just one..." But cold turkey had already wiped out his body's resilience against it, and boom. There's that fatal mistake with junkies.

We know the minute he's going plastic. Shit, Charlie and I have been watching that ass for forty-odd years; we know when the moneymaker's shaking and when it's being told what to do.

In the '70s, showtime was when I woke up. I might have been three hours late, but there was no such thing as curfews for shows. If you went to see a show, you would be there for the whole night. Nobody said it would start on time. If I was late, sorry, but it was just the right time for the show. Nobody left.

You realized that you were really in one of the sleaziest businesses there is, without actually being a gangster. It was a business where the only time people laughed was when they'd screwed someone else over.

I've never wanted to play like anybody else, except when I was first starting, when I wanted to be Scotty Moore or Chuck Berry. After that, I wanted to find out what the guitar or the piano could teach me.

If you say I'm great, thank you very much. But I know what I am. I could be better, man, you know?

We knew that we'd set something on fire that I still can't control, quite honestly.

We had become a pirate nation, moving on a huge scale under our own flag, with lawyers, clowns, attendants.

was a very important distinction in the '60s. Either you were blues and jazz or you were rock and roll, but rock and roll had died and gone pop—nothing left in it.

Some of my most outrageous nights I can only believe actually happened because of corroborating evidence. No wonder I'm famous for partying! The ultimate party, if it's any good, you can't remember it.

Andrew created an amazing thing in my life. I had never thought about songwriting. He made me learn the craft, and at the same time I realized, yes, I am good at it. And slowly this whole other world opens up, because now you're not just a player, or trying to play like somebody else. It isn't just other people's expression. I can start to express myself, I can write my own music. It's almost

you've ever had in your hand ever, and more than your dad makes in a year, schlepping and working his fucking arse off. I mean, what to do with it is another thing, because I've got another gig to do, and I'm working. But I must say, the first taste of a few hundred crisp new bills was not unsatisfying. What to do with it took some time. But it was the first feeling of being ahead of the game. And all I did was write a couple songs and they gave it to me.

People would knock Freddie, say he was crude, insulting, vulgar, and why not? You could think anything you wanted of him, but Freddie was one of the best men I ever met. Totally horrible, revolting. Absolutely over the top, stupid at times, but solid.

What they were reacting to was being in this enclosed space with us—this illusion, me, Mick and Brian. The music might be the trigger, but the bullet, nobody knows what that is.

They were such a sweet and gentle couple. "Can we make you a cup of tea?" Nothing that you think about "junkies." It was all very civilized. Sometimes I'd go to the cottage and—because they were mainliners—say, "Penny, is Steve still alive?" "I think so, darling. Anyway, have a cup of tea and then we'll wake him up.

Up until the mid-1970s, Mick and I were inseparable. We made every decision for the group. We'd get together and kick things around, write all our songs. But once we were split up, I started going my way, which was the downhill road to dopesville, and Mick ascended to jet land. We were dealing with a load of problems that built up, being who we were and what the sixties had been.

never thought drugs per se had very much to do with whether I was productive or not. It might have changed a few chords, a few verses here and there, but I never felt any diminishment or any extra lift as far as what I was doing was concerned.