Keith Richards Music Quotations

If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.

I mean, give me a guitar, give me a piano, give me a broom and string, I wouldn't get bored anywhere.

I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police.

About myself I have no great illusions. I know what I am. I know what I'm good at. I know what I ain't. I'm always hoping to surprise myself. But I do have a love of music and I do love to communicate it, and that's the best I can do, really. And I can raise a good family, too.

Other than its sense of rhythm, it's music by the tone-deaf for the tone-deaf.

The thing about being a songwriter, once you realize you are one, is that to provide ammo, you start to become an observer. ... You're constantly on the alert. That faculty gets trained in you over the years: observing people, how they react to one another, which in a way makes you weirdly distant. ... It's a little of Peeping Tom, being a song-writer.

Some people think I'm a mythical genius, others think I'm a junkie madman.

... I don't like to go into the studio with all the songs worked out and planned before hand ... you've got to give the band something to use its imagination on as well. That can make a very ordinary song come alive into something totally different ... the X-factor - so important in rock and roll - which is the feel..