Boy Blue: The original stage name Keith Richards wanted to adopt
Richard Penniman, James Osterberg, Stevland Morris; these names would look almost anonymous if splashed across an album cover, but Little Richard, Iggy Pop, and Stevie Wonder make for truly iconic names within the music industry. This explains the importance and popularity of stage names, which have been commonplace within the music industry since its very early days. Nevertheless, stage names only ever represented a missed opportunity for Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards.
A life-long blues obsessive, Richards spent his adolescence under the spell of legendary artists like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and BB King. These were the artists that laid the groundwork for rock and roll, and they were also the artists that initially brought The Rolling Stones together. Brian Jones formed the group in 1962, during the blues renaissance in London, and their early performances were largely made up of cover songs paying homage to those blues figures.
In reality, the blues is among the least superficial musical movements out there. The importance is always placed entirely on the music itself, its authenticity, and the emotions those songs convey. In the mind of a young Keith Richards, however, to be a truly successful blues musician, you needed an equally captivating stage name. While names like Howlin’ Wolf look great on record sleeves, the comparatively normal Keith Richards sounds rather dull.
During a 2009 interview, Richards confirmed the fact that his name was a source of insecurity during those early years. “It made me sick – my name’s Keith Richards,” the guitarist said. “It hardly makes it against Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters, does it?” Of course, in the years that followed the Rolling Stones’ rapid rise to global success, Richards earned himself a fair few nicknames, often less-than-favourable monikers handed to him by the tabloid press, but nothing that ever stuck.
Richards’ name is now as iconic as any other, at least within the world of rock and roll, thanks to the unparalleled reputation earned by his band. Reportedly, though, during his early days, honing his craft and obsessing over old-school blues records, Richards nearly abandoned his birth name altogether – although his other options weren’t much better.
“On my first guitar, I had Boy Blue written – just pathetic,” Richards admitted. “But that was as good as I got at the time.” Richards’ exact age during his ‘Boy Blue’ era remains unclear, but it is fair to say that the name was pretty uninspired. Keith Richards might not sound like the name of a rock and roll star without the context of Keef’s subsequent life, but no number of drug busts, wild parties, or legendary riffs could make the name Boy Blue sound like that of a rock and roll star.
Thankfully, Richards quickly abandoned the Boy Blue name when he joined the ranks of The Rolling Stones in 1962, opting instead for his birth name. Interestingly, though, there was a brief period during which the band’s manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, tried to convince the guitar hero to drop the ‘s’ from the end of his name, going by Keith Richard instead.
Reportedly, Oldham thought that Keith Richard sounded more like a rock star – perhaps he had been listening to Cliff – but the change did not last very long. So, while stage names have provided a way for multiple musicians to invent personas and create a brand for themselves, they are not always essential for success. Keith Richards’ guitar-playing and songwriting talent has always spoken for itself.
