“I had enough of the screaming Mimis many years ago,” Keith Richards tells GQ’s Wells Towers, reflecting on his stardom.
“But it was an interesting period, you’ve gotta say: 3,000 rabid females trying to tear your clothes off. But I can’t handle 3,000 at once.” This month, GQ celebrates its 20th Anniversary Men of the Year issue and Keith Richards as “The Rock.”
With the release of his new album Crosseyed Heart, Richards says, “I never thought of making records as a way of being famous or making a statement. I just want to make good records with good musicians, to play with the best and learn…
I just want to make a good record that will sit there and say, This is part of his work.”
So how does a rock and roll legend come back with a solo album after so much time away from the spotlight? “Sometimes it’s daunting,” confesses Richards. “But when it comes down to it, actually playing, it just brings me down to sort of zero, as if I was still with Mick locked in a kitchen by Andrew Oldham [the Stones’ first producer and manager] saying, ‘You ain’t coming out until you got a song.’”
And as for his day-to-day: “[I]t’s amusing, people think I’m every day––” He cycles through a pantomime: smoking, snorting, needle-plunging. “People would be surprised how banal and usual and normal my life at home is. I take out the garbage. I feed the dogs. I bring up the kids… I don’t care how cool and hip and whatever you think you are. You get down the line, baby, what counts is family.”
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