Keith Richards: Under the Influence Page #4

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You know what I mean?

[chuckles]

These guys were gentlemen

in the true meaning of the word.

I mean, I've no doubt

they could be as mean as, you know...

And I didn't wanna know.

But there was

an innate politeness about them.

They were in awe

that we'd even heard of them.

And we were in awe

of meeting them.

And so you have this

mutual appreciation society going on,

which still goes on to this day.

[Guy] Ah! There you go!

I used to go into Chess

and try to turn my amplifier up, out loud,

and they would run me out saying,

"Don't nobody wanna hear that."

But when they started playing

and it got back to Leonard, he said,

"The British are playing it,

and it's getting over."

So I turned my amp up

like these British guys.

Do you have to live that life

to be a blues player?

Do you have to be black or white

to play the blues?

Hell no, man!

The bottom line,

it's about the good and the bad times.

And if you haven't had a bad time in life,

just keep living.

[Richards] All right.

[Richards] Oh.

Oh...

-[Guy laughing] I give up, man.

-[Richards laughing]

All right. All right.

Ah, that's where I left it.

[playing piano]

Why did I bother to play piano?

A guy called Ian Stewart, you know.

He started The Stones,

and he was one of the best

boogie pianists I had heard.

I mean, especially in England.

There was one thing he played.

I said, "Look,

I gotta learn how to do that."

Just show me, you know,

just the basics.

[playing piano]

For me, in the right mood,

and at the right instrument,

there's a certain feeling

of being an antenna,

receiving and then transmitting.

I'll sit down at the piano

and pick up the guitar

and happily play

Buddy Holly or Otis Redding.

And then, somewhere,

with a bit of luck,

you realize that something

you'd thought that you'd played wrong

was actually...

a start of a whole different song.

I said, "I gotta learn this, man."

I wrote a lot of stuff on piano.

I wrote "Let's Spend The Night Together,"

"Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby,"

but I don't consider

myself a piano player.

I use it as a paint box,

you know, just to...

A touch here, a touch there.

Usually just the right hand.

[laughs]

She, she's got a mind of her own

And she use it well

Actually, I piss about a lot.

And then it's...

And it's like, whatever strikes me.

But I've always loved playing the piano.

I think one of the reasons...

Being a guitar player, you know, your

instrument is in a strange, you know...

a different position.

But the piano, to me,

it's, like, laid out like a chess game.

[playing "Sing Me Back Home"]

-See, I love my country sh*t.

-[man chuckles]

Oh, won't you sing me back home?

To the songs my mama sang

Make my old memories come alive

Please take me away

Yeah, turn back all those years

Sing me back home before

I die

See, country music...

I was listening to Porter Wagoner

in 1953, man. I mean, yeah,

Johnny Cash, Hank Williams...

We didn't get a lot of it in England,

but, yeah, well aware of it.

My mother made sure of that.

Country music, I mean, to me,

I heard stories

that you're never quite sure,

you know, how nasty it can get.

Someone stole some money

Who it is,

it ain't quite clear

Stolen from my honey

She holds my stash 'round here

The cops, you know

I can't involve them

They'd only interfere

So I hit the usual suspects

But I drew a blank round here

I'm robbed blind

Robbed blind

[song continues]

Beautiful woodwork.

The boards, the hallowed boards, yeah.

[Richards] I've only played here once,

with Willie Nelson.

It was built as a church.

And now it's a temple to country music.

What's the difference, you know?

We all come here to worship

and pray to the best, you know.

And God knows everybody's been on here.

I first heard country music

on a pirate radio station.

[Marty Robbins singing]

Out in the West Texas town of El Paso

I fell in love with a Mexican girl

[radio stations switching]

[Richards] Reception was dodgy.

That required a lot of maneuvering

around the room

with the antenna, you know?

[laughs]

But country music immediately, like,

pulled chimes within me, you know.

I mean, it was the melodies, I think,

and also the guitars, you know.

You know, that pedal steel's

a heartbreaker, man.

Sometimes the songs are really dopey.

But then sometimes the dopiest song

would have the best melody.

And at the same time

there was a certain edge on certain guys.

Hank Williams, particularly.

You measure country music

by this cat.

[Hank Williams singing]

Hear that lonesome whip-poor-will

He sounds too blue to fly

[Richards] Hank Williams, Johnny Cash,

Merle Haggard...

They were pretty tough guys.

The reality of country music

on the road is something else.

Rock and roll's got nothing on those guys.

The Stones once turned up at a Holiday Inn

in Fresno, something like that.

And there's this

smell of paint everywhere.

They go, "There's your room."

And, "What's going on?"

And they said, "Well...

[chuckling] Johnny Cash and Luther Perkins

were here two nights ago

and painted the whole damn room orange.

Drapes and all," he says.

If I'd have known,

I would've brought some paint cleaner.

I'm so lonesome I could cry

[man] You never had

any Nudie suits, did you?

[Richards] I'll tell you what,

Gram Parsons used to

pass his cast-offs to me, yeah.

I did have one of Gram's Nudie suits.

It was made by a tailor in

San Fernando Valley called Nudie.

We used to go around there, yeah.

What a madman.

[laughs]

Gram Parsons taught me so much about

this mystique of the "country."

I was very much drawn to him,

and he was the big influence.

[man singing]

She's a devil in disguise

You can see it in her eyes

She's telling dirty lies

She's a devil in disguise

[Richards] Gram hung with us

when we were cutting

Exile On Main Street and "Wild Horses."

Meeting Gram,

I got fully immersed in country music.

But as much as he was a country boy

and loved his country music,

his idea of America

was very bizarre, you know?

And, uh...

So, I said, "That's bizarre."

And he said,

"You wanna see how bizarre? Look at this."

This guy has got longhorns

on the end of his Cadillac.

So, to me, all of this temple for

a Stetson and some rhinestones is like...

But that says the other side

of what country music is about.

It's the razzle-dazzle.

It's Colonel Parker

and the dancing chickens.

Me, I didn't see the Stetson

and the rhinestones.

I just heard the music.

And I always knew

that this is the heartland.

This is where American music

was put in the crucible

and came out as, you know,

pretty much pure silver.

["Sweet Virginia" playing]

This was rock and roll.

That's where country music

and the blues sort of collided.

I always felt myself fortunate

to be in a spot where, in America,

these few forms of music

were somehow merging

and creating something else, you know?

So, it was great to watch

and be a part of,

and now be the king of.

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