Keith Richards

""Keith could eat iron and piss rust.""

- Phil Kaufman

""Keith Richards said that kids should not do drugs; Keith, we can't do any more drugs, because you already fucking did them all! There's none left; we have to wait until you die and smoke your ashes! Jesus Christ! Talk about the pot and the fucking kettle!""

- Denis Leary

Keith Richards is the rhythm guitarist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones, one of the best known members along with lead singer Mick Jagger. His inspirations have long included Chuck Berry, Scotty Moore and Bo Diddley. His style is (predictably) a standard blues rock feel, emphasizing chords and rhythm over 'fastest-gun-in-the-west style.'

He is frequently listed among the top ranks of guitarist magazines, greatest song lists, and all time rock and roller greats. His musical history is enormous, with hundreds of songs to his name, and even more guitarists inspired directly or partially by him. He has also inspired actors, but more on that later.

Unfortunately, despite his talent, he is most remembered for his amazing amounts of drug intakes, and other 'misquotations' from his long career. He once famously responded to an interviewer asking him what the strangest thing he had ever snorted was by saying 'my father, his ashes ground up and snorted.' This article had to be changed by his management, since it stated incorrectly that he ground his father's ashes up 'like cocaine' when in truth it was 'with cocaine'. Also, they incorrectly stated that he listened to Motorhead, not Mozart.

Recently, Richards has been made famous by Johnny Depp, who based the movement of the character Jack Sparrow off Keith Richards. Richards then appeared in the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie as Jack Sparrow's father, complete with his wife's shrunken head.


 * Immortality / Made of Iron - A common joke about Keith Richards is that he and cockroaches will be the only things to survive a nuclear holocaust. The man seriously rivals Ozzy Osbourne in terms of ability to survive the unsurvivable!
 * Also he would be accompanied by Lemmy and Courtney Love according to Mick Farren
 * And he cannot be killed by conventional weapons.
 * Falling off a coconut tree will injure him, though...
 * Bill Maher sums it up: "New Rule: Airplane black boxes must be made out of Keith Richards. The man who has done more drugs than Rush Limbaugh and Robert Downey, Jr. combined just recently fell out of a tree and then crashed a jetski. And yet that cigarette never fell from his lip. Something tells me the future of medical research isn't injecting stem cells, it's injecting heroin."
 * The BBC actually headlined an article How is Keith Richards still alive?
 * According to one interview, when the Stones were heading out on world tour in The Eighties, they first put Keith through a complete medical checkup to make sure that he could be reasonably expected to survive the tour after 20 years on booze and hard drugs. The doctor gave him every test in the book and then pronounced his health normal for a man in his 40s. Quoth Keith, "it was the only time anyone's ever called me normal."
 * Hypocritical Humor: Has chided Steven Tyler for his heavy drug use.
 * I'm a Humanitarian - The business with him supposedly snorting his father's ashes, although it may have been a joke.
 * Immune to Drugs
 * I Take Offence to That Last One: When it was reported Keith Richards had snorted his father's ashes 'like cocaine' he responded angrily that it had been 'with cocaine' not 'like cocaine.' Many wonder how this is better.
 * If you had tried snorting things other than cocaine before you might know that most range from heavy discomfort to incredible pain when inhaled through your nose. Cocaine on the other hand is known for its 'numbing' properties, and in fact makes just about anything go down (up?) smoother. I haven't tried Ashes before, but I imagine ingesting them in such a way would be much easier (and more rewarding) with a generous amount of coke.
 * No One Could Survive That: His entire life.
 * The Lancer
 * Urban Legend: Supposedly, Keith is able to cheat death because every few years, he gets a full blood transfusion at a clinic in Switzerland. Keith said he told this to the customs officer in London as a joke, and the guy bought it.