The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has revealed that he thought he ‘stole’ for a huge hit song, though he wouldn’t reveal which song it was, in a recently uploaded Guitar Magazine interview. Keith Richards being in denial about a The Rolling Stones bandmate quitting was revealed earlier this week.
Richards has compared his songwriting to being like a human radio, where he picks up songs out of the ether. Does he ever worry they might be someone else’s? “Yeah. Especially the good ones. I think it’s not mine. There was one Stones song, even after it was out, been a hit and had been around for years, I was convinced I’d stolen it. Nobody could tell me where it came from, but I was convinced it was a total steal – it was ages before I could put it out, I was so convinced it belonged to someone else.”
Do you ever find yourself at a loss about what to write next, Guitar asked. “Loads of times. Very rarely does a song come all at once. Half a song, snatches of an idea, but where does it go from here? You can reach an impasse. But writing with other people, more times than you think possible, he’s got a piece of music he doesn’t know what to do with, either.” Mick Jagger was ripped by a big name earlier this week after his bizarre bedroom demands were revealed.
“Mick and I have done that so many times we can’t believe it. And a lot of the time, the songs will be in different keys, and I’m thinking, how the hell do we fit these together, I’m gonna have to change the key, and Mick might just say, ‘Just play it’ – you just stick them together – and it works!” You can read the full interview at Guitar.com.
