Keith Richards

The band releases their song, Doom and Gloom, from the album, GRRR!. Richards:

I don’t think the Stones have ever cut a track so fast. It was like three takes and – boom! We were like looking at each other and going, ‘Got anything else?’ It was amazingly quick. The Stones are amazing that way, their chemistry and their energy when they get together. The hard bit with the Stones is getting them together.

The band releases, You Got Me Rocking, from the album, Voodoo Lounge. Richards:

I wrote it on piano. It’s sort of like a Little Richard thing. And then when I took it to guitar I really got interested in it. Because before that I was really doing a parody of something like rock and roll piano music. But then it sort of went Celtic on me. Some of these strange drone notes. And it sort of took on another life. And then Charlie got into it with this little go-go beat – this great tom tom bit – and I’m a sucker for that, man. You give me that, especially with Charlie Watts playing it. It was a heavy-duty jungle thing.

The band releases their song, Mixed Emotions, from the album, Steel Wheels. Richards:

I think we cut that in Montserrat, an island that no longer exists. That smoldering heap of volcanic eruptions. And we were the last guys to cut there. That was the last record anybody cut there. It’s what happens when you work with The Stones. They got a hurricane and then it erupted. It was a pretty island once. With Mixed Emotions I think I had the music and I went to Mick and said, bring your bit to it. Because it’s a two-way street a lot of the time. I mean there was a time when Mick and I used to write face-to-face all the time. But we were on the road then. Now we can bring ideas to each other and sometimes it’s strange – we hadn’t seen each other for maybe 5 or 6 months and we get together and funny enough, we’d each have written a piece of music that actually fits together even though we haven’t been in communication with each other.

The band releases their song, Harlem Shuffle, from the album, Dirty Work. Richards:

I’ve been trying to get Harlem Shuffle on an album, without actually telling Mick, for 5 or 6 years. I thought that was a natural number for him to sing – it was made for him. I’ve been giving him cassettes with Harlem Shuffle stuffed in the middle somewhere for a long time, but I never got any real response. One night we were in the studio and Woody and I started plunking away at it. We were amazed at how simple the song was – about 2 chords. The band was just warming up on it, jamming, when Mick walked in and started singing. We realized, YEAH. And we did it in 2 takes. So it paid off eventually, though it cost me a fortune in cassettes.

The band releases, Start Me Up, from, Tattoo You. Richards:

The story here is the miracle that we ever found that track. I was convinced – and I think Mick was – that it was definitely a Reggae song. And we did it in 38 takes – ‘Start me up. Yeah, man, cool. You know, you know, Jah Rastafari.’ And it didn’t make it. And somewhere in the middle of a break, just to break the tension, Charlie and I hit the rock and roll version. And right after that we went straight back to Reggae. And we forgot totally about this one little burst in the middle, until about five years later when somebody sifted all the way through these Reggae takes. After doing about 70 takes of Start Me Up he found that one in the middle. It was just buried in there. Suddenly I had it. Nobody remembered cutting it. But we leapt on it again. We did a few overdubs on it, and it was like a gift, you know? One of the great luxuries of The Stones is we have an enormous, great big can of stuff. I mean what anybody hears is just the tip of an iceberg, you know. And down there is vaults of stuff. But you have to have the patience and the time to actually sift through it

The band releases, Happy, from the album, Exile On Main St. Richards:

That’s a strange song, because if you play it you actually become happy, even in the worst of circumstances. It has a little magical bounce about it. I wrote it one afternoon when we were cutting Exile on Main St. in France and the studio was in my basement. And Bobby Keys was with me and they got this lick going. So we went down and I recorded it with just guitar and Bobby Keys on baritone saxophone. While we were doing that, Jimmy Miller, who was our producer at the time, came in. And he was a very good drummer as well. So we said, well let’s put down a dub, we’ll just sort of sketch it out and play it later. But it’s another one of those things that ended up being on the record. It was just one of those moments that you get that are very happy. And I can play it now and it gives you a lift. I don’t know why except for maybe the word.