Happy 70th Birthday, Keith Richards!
Celebrate the survival of the Rolling Stones’ human riff with a bespoke selection of MOJO’s fave Keith Richards clips. Roll ’em!
He’s been wedded to The Rolling Stones for 50 years and remains the band’s beating heart, the keeper of the flame, the master of the riff and one of music’s true talismanic figures. Today, Keith Richards turns 70 – in the process defying the predictions of pretty much everyone who witnessed those decades where flying too close to the sun was all in a day’s work.
To celebrate this auspicious occasion we’ve picked some of our favourite Keith moments on film, clips that we think capture the rock star, the bluesman, the country outlaw, the raconteur, the meditative troubadour, and the man who'll wrap a Telecaster round your head if you dare invade his stage. We begin in 1972 with his signature cut from Exile On Main Street...
Happy (US tour, 1972)
Interview (Old Grey Whistle Test, 1974)
Hickory Wind (Return To Sin City: A Tribute To Gram Parsons, 2004)
Dealing with "a fan" onstage (Virginia Hampton Coliseum, December 18, 1981)
Honky Tonk Women (David Frost Show, 1969)
Interview (Life, BBC documentary, 2010)
PHOTO: Alan Messer/REX