keith richards

Few Rolling Stones songs have had such an interesting history -- right up to Susan Boyle's recent interpretation -- as this one. Keith Richards has always claimed the title was his; Mick Jagger insists the song came from the first words Marianne Faithfull said when she came arround from a failed suicide attempt in '69: "Wild horses...
> fromthevaults/3350/the-flying-burrito-brothers-wild-horses-1970/

When McKinley Morganfield’s grandmother named him Muddy after the nearby Mississippi and he later took the surname Waters, there seemed something oddly symbolic in it. Here was man who wasn’t born in the year he said he was, claimed a town he wasn’t born in as his birthplace and carried a name he wasn’t born with....
> writingelsewhere/2111/cant-be-satisfied-the-life-and-times-of-muddy-waters-by-robert-gordon/

The press didn't rate them at the time, they had a solid and loyal following of largely uncool fans, and they themselves seemed to take it all as a joke. It was only rock'n'roll, but they liked it. My friends either didn't know of them and didn't care to, or did and hated them. I liked 'em. They were the Quireboys and we met in a...
> mybackpages/2762/the-quireboys-white-trash-rhythmnbooze/

Keith Richards once offered a neat observations of Mick Jagger: "Mick's a lovely bunch of blokes." Jagger, by all acounts, has that uncanny ability to switch his langauge and accent depending on who he is talking to: with the turn of his head he can go from plum-in-mouth when chatting with a lord or lady to a Jamaican accent if the...
> film/3247/stones-in-exile-a-documentary-by-stephen-kijak/

Few albums in rock have been so surrounded in dark mythology as this sprawling double album which was the last great gasp of the Rolling Stones. Certainly subsequent albums -- Goats Head Soup, It's Only Rock'n'Roll and Black and Blue particularly -- had their great moments but (aside from Jagger's embrace of New York dance and Richards'...
> essentialelsewhere/3163/the-rolling-stones-exile-on-main-st-1972-reissued-2010/

With the impending 40th anniversary re-issue of the Stones' Exile on Main Street, the time might be right to rediscover rootsy, toxic, blues-driven rock'n'roll which slews sideways out of the speakers fueled by whisky and weed. If that's the case, then this album is neatly timed to anticipate the Stones. On their fourth album...
> music/3122/deadstring-brothers-sao-paulo-bloodshot/

There's a fairly lazy shorthand about Aerosmith, they are the band that so wanted to be the Rolling Stones that over time frontman Steve Tyler and guitarist Joe Perry started to look like Mick and Keith. That is sort of true, but --  especially in their early days -- they had a rock momentum and sound of their own. They did however...
> music/3079/the-bargain-buy-aerosmith-toys-in-the-attic-sony/

Revenge is a dish best served cold -- and with a pointed fuckin' still-angry-at-you-bastardfucker lyric. And Ronnie got her chance when her former husband Phil Spector was facing a murder charge. Ronnie Spector, the voice of the classic girl group the Ronettes of the Sixties which Phil produced, married the mad boss and spent years as a...
> fromthevaults/2795/ronnie-spector-girl-from-the-ghetto-2006/

About 20 years ago I interviewed the legendary Kansas City pianist, Jay McShann, in an Auckland bar. He’d flown in late the previous afternoon, had a “talk-rehearsal” with the local rhythm section, and that night played two exceptional sets of good-humoured Kansas City boogie and blues, sometimes sounding like he was coming at...
> jazz/2088/pianist-jay-mcshann-from-charlie-parker-to-keith-richards/

The intersection of highways 61 and 49 near Clarksdale in northwest Mississippi doesn't look particularly special: there's a car yard, a service station, a couple of kids listlessly kicking a ball outside Abe's barbecue shop . . . Just the usual stuff. The only thing to distinguish it from hundreds of other such intersections in the state...
> absoluteelsewhere/1801/travelling-riverside-blues-robert-johnson-the-blues-and-clarksdale-mississippi/

While it may have been possible to make an even more superficial DVD of the Stones' career than this, it would take a bit more laziness. Relying on newsreel footage, a few talking heads and with no access to their music, what you get here is a fast trip through their fortysomething year career with most of the emphasis on the Sixties and...
> music/2869/the-rolling-stones-truth-and-lies-eagle-media-dvd/

The live album -- or double live as was standard in the days of vinyl -- has had a chequered history in rock: some live albums defined an artists career (Frampton Comes Alive, Thin Lizzy's Live and Dangerous) and others added little to the sum of our knowledge (most of Dylan's). Some artists regularly drop live albums (Paul McCartney, who...
> absoluteelsewhere/2742/the-rolling-stones-get-yer-ya-yas-out-2009-the-69-garden-party/

We have been down this occasionally interesting path previously with the Chrome Dreams label which has delivered DVDs about bands such as the Small Faces, the whole German electronic movement (Kraftwerk, Can et al) and Frank Zappa, as well as CDs of Bob Dylan's jukebox and a compilation of his Radio Hour music (no intros by Bob though)....
> music/2571/the-rolling-stones-in-the-1960s-chrome-dreams-dvd-triton/

There's a widespread belief - peculiarly pervasive among rock writers, oddly enough - that Bill Wyman's Stone Alone autobiography of the Rolling Stones was boring, as if this was a surprise. Wyman, the bassist who quit in late '91, was always the odd man out. Seven years older than Mick Jagger and born with the superbly Dickensian...
> writingelsewhere/2439/rolling-with-the-stones-by-bill-wyman-every-picture-tells-a-story/

The Rolling Stones have had quite a marketing profile in their 40th-anniversary year: the reissue of all their early albums through to the mid 70s; the 40 Licks double-disc hit-stacked compilation; the 40 Licks global jaunt (billed as their "farewell tour" in some circles) which has been more musically and financially successful than...
> writingelsewhere/2438/according-to-the-rolling-stones-edited-by-dora-loewenstein-and-philip-dodd-2003-voices-off/

The Rolling Stones stumbled out of the decadent decade of the Seventies into the uncertain Eighties which kicked off with post-disco dance, post-punk, New Wave and other styles which they weren't familiar with. But what else could these rich boys do but play in a rock'n'roll band? Not a lot as their career from '81 to the present day...
> absoluteelsewhere/2427/the-rolling-stones-1981-to-now-on-with-the-show/

When Virgin Records paid about US$50 million for a slice of the Rolling Stones back in 1991 they were investing in the past more than the future. That’s with all due respect to the legend that is Jagger-Richards -- a collective proper noun appropriate given their separate solo careers have been abject commercial failures and largely...
> absoluteelsewhere/2409/the-rolling-stones-in-the-seventies-the-decade-of-decadence/

Quite when pop became rock is difficult to pinpoint. It is possible to argue that dark, dense and adult rock has been around for more than 50 years. Think of Ronnie Hawkins' threatening delivery of Who Do You Love with these hard edge lyrics: "I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, got a cobra snake for a necktie". That...
> absoluteelsewhere/2410/the-rolling-stones-the-sixties-through-the-past-darkly-again/

The cracked and distinctive vocals of Faithfull have, as with Leonard Cohen, a devoted following -- and this double album which sounds typically whisky'n'smoke-cured is perhaps for longtime loyalists. Helmed by producer and musical conceptualist Hal Willner (who did, among other fascinating albums, the Charles Mingus tribute Weird...
> music/2212/marianne-faithfull-easy-come-easy-go-naive/

More than four decades after one of the family first scored a hit, and 25 years from the first Neville Brothers album Fiyo on the Bayou, you could almost forgive the brothers Aaron, Art, Charles and Cyril for slowing down a little.  The oldest, keyboardist Art, is 68 and had a close call with death after back surgery in late 2001. And...
> absoluteelsewhere/2203/ivan-neville-interviewed-2005-the-family-that-plays-together/

The early albums by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones appeared in different versions in Britain and the States. New Zealand being a colony thankfully got the UK versions for the most part, just as the gods intended. But in some instances we got something different from both -- and in this case, better. The album The Unstoppable Stones...
> essentialelsewhere/786/the-rolling-stones-the-unstoppable-stones-1965/

Director Martin Scorsese might have his name large on the credits of this 2006 Rolling Stones concert but it is clear from the opening scenes just who is in charge: it is the Stones, and Mick Jagger in particular. During hilarious opening scenes which recall Spinal Tap and the pilot for Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jagger is seen rejecting a model...
> film/518/the-rolling-stones-shine-a-light-its-not-only-rocknroll-2008-review/

Some might say that the last thing the world needs right now is another live Stones collection. After all Get Yer Ya Ya's Out (released a whopping 38 years go!) is the hardcore fan's classic, and we've had Love You Live, Still Life, Flashpoint, Stripped and No Security since. And it was only four years ago that we had Live Licks, a...
> music/1569/the-rolling-stones-shine-a-light-universal/

It’s probably a bit cruel to destroy people’s faith in myths -- like telling a six-year old the truth about Santa Claus -- but the reason there are so few decent autobiographies and biographies in rock music is simple: the central characters aren’t that interesting. Being a musician at that fascinating interface of low art...
> absoluteelsewhere/509/bill-wyman-stone-alone-reviewed-1990-insider-looking-out/

He smoked a joint on the roof of the White House, sang with Julio Iglesias and on We Are The World, and he's still here. And still great -- sometimes. Willie Nelson, much like Dean Martin, has an effortless approach to life -- and recording. He could, as they say, sing a telephone directory and make it sound intersting. But latterly it is...
> absoluteelsewhere/495/willie-nelson-album-reviews-2000-2005-what-a-long-strange-trip/

If you want to capture the essence of the 70s in a word it's "hair". At the start of the decade there were Afros and cascades of curls halfway down backs (that's the men) and the long straight stuff with fringes (the women -- and Noddy Holder from Slade).   By mid-decade there were dreadlocks, moustaches and big...
> film/821/the-old-grey-whistle-test-dvd-reviewed-2007/

If memory serves me still, it was schoolmate Chris Gilbert and I who went to see the Stones together at Auckland's Civic Theatre on March 1, 1966. I know I wore a black polo-necked sweater (of the kind that Stones Brian Jones and Keith Richard favoured), and that the show, while not actually changing my life, had a profound --and not...
> absoluteelsewhere/397/the-rolling-stones-an-essay-living-in-memory-motel/

From the back row of Chicago's United Centre, about four storeys above the stage, Mick Jagger - not the biggest of men anyway - is the size of a matchstick held at arm's length.But even without his roadmap features projected on the screen behind him, this is undeniable Mick. He struts'n'thrusts across the stage and still possesses that animal...
> absoluteelsewhere/402/the-rolling-stones-live-in-chicago-2002-men-of-stone/

Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, in a hotel in Tokyo, calls an hour after the appointed time but his manager has previously been full of apologies, and fielding three phone calls simultaneously. Richards is polite, friendly and his conversation is peppered with laughter which sounds like marbles rattling around in the bottom of a muddy...
> absoluteelsewhere/369/keith-richards-interviewed-2006-stone-survivor/

Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen's band said it best: " 'Everybody love Ronnie.' It's the first bylaw of rock'n'roll." Ronnie Spector, lead singer of the archetypal 60s girl-group the Ronettes, defined the exuberant spirit of pre-Beatles American rock'n'roll through the alchemy of a street-wise image adopted from Spanish...
> absoluteelsewhere/784/ronnie-spector-interviewed-time-has-come-today-2006/

When Keith Richards fell out of that palm tree -- or fell off a stump as we later heard -- he was hospitalised in Auckland and underwent brain surgery. Given the seriousness of his condition and his age it was widely anticipated at the Herald that he might not survive, so in addition to having the "official" obituary ready to go I was...
> absoluteelsewhere/778/the-late-great-keith-richards-an-early-obit/