Keith Richards’ favourite Keith Richards solo song
Keith Richards once explained that he writes specifically with Mick Jagger in mind. The Rolling Stones duo have formed a partnership over the last seven decades that has rendered them rock ‘n’ roll royalty. They know each other inside out, and they galvanise each other’s simpatico sensibilities into something magical. However, the trade-off for this is that they often struggle when they’re apart.
“I think that everybody – with the possible exception of Mick himself – has learned the lesson that Mick Jagger’s really good when he’s with the Rolling Stones,” Richards told Guitar World. “But when he ain’t, I don’t think anybody gives a fuckin’ toss. Whether he gets the message or not. Obviously, he does. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be on this project.”
While he hasn’t bashed his own solo work quite so brutally, he has often bemoaned the fact that he can’t seem to shift Jagger’s voice and modes from his songwriting psyche, giving the impression that when they’re apart, he begins to miss him. As he said in defence of his own harshness, “You put up with each other’s bitching. People will think we’re having these huge arguments and say, ‘Oh, will they split up?’ But it’s our way of working, you know? He’s my wife. And he’ll say the same thing about me: ‘Yeah, he’s my wife.’”
So, if Jagger is his wife, then what does that make his solo songs? Self-pleasuring? Well, when it comes to that rather unmemorable pursuit, he cites only one song among his memorable favourites. “I mean, that’s subjective,” he replied when asked by Finish station YLE to name the best songs he has written. “There’s too many for me to choose. The good ones I like, and there are other ones where I forget about it, and then sometimes I hear it and say, ‘Wow, that actually wasn’t so bad’.”
He then drunkenly rattles off a slew of classics in a blase fashion, from ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ to ‘Satisfaction‘, before giving a notable moment’s pause, raising his eyebrows and dropping his favourite solo anthem, ‘Make No Mistake’. The track is taken from his 1988 solo debut, Talk is Cheap, and the guitarist has rarely bettered the reggae-inflected single.
He cut the track with Al Green’s old producer, Willie Mitchell. While Richards might not have the unrivalled pipes of Reverend Green, he certainly captured that oozing sense of swinging soul in the Memphis studio. He even welcomed Sarah Dash for an extra helping of soul in the otherwise reggae-based anthem, and all of these points of difference amount to a total escape from the influence of Jagger.
The song finds Richards in a far different mode. There are more sweeping movements and brass in the mix, edging him away from the blues and closer to Count Basie. Yet, the darkness still prevails, bringing about a Tom Waits – another artist he admired greatly during this period of Memphis and Jamaica fascination – degree of drunken, subterranean ambience to the tale of mystic frisson.
On that front, Richards figured he nailed the mood of the song with something stirringly fresh. “My favourite chord is the one I haven’t found yet,” he told Rolling Stone. “But that’s one of those moments when I thought I found the lost chord.”
