The most important thing for a guitarist to learn, according to Keith Richards
There are two things that Keith Richards does with more style than anyone else: smoke while telling an anecdote and strum. In fact, it’s a little-known truth that it was Richards who invented Pete Townshend’s famous windmill technique. The Who guitarist saw his hero doing it backstage as part of a warm-up and couldn’t believe it when Richards said he was free to use it as he pleased on stage.
In truth, you half suspect that this wasn’t purely because Richards wanted to sustain his laidback image but rather because he knows the importance of the right hand. The Rolling Stones guitarist says that everyone thinks it’s a flashy left hand on the fret that makes someone great, but he rubbishes this, saying, “There’s two sides to every story.”
“If that one [the right hand], doesn’t connect with that one [the left hand],” he told Guitar Moves, “you’re getting what? One and a half stories?” This typifies how considered he is as a musician. Rooted in the blues, Richards has always disavowed showing off as nothing but egoist drivel that doesn’t come close to matching the energy of rock ‘n’ roll done right. This is also why he revered his bandmates Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman so much. They may have been a simple rhythm section, but for Richards, the power was all in the “mix”.
“Somehow, you have to get this one and this one,” he says about his hands, “to love each other.” In order to do so, he claims there’s a definitive starting point for everyone who picks up a six-string. “I would say that the acoustic guitar is the most important thing for a guitar player to start with, learn the feel and the touch of that string and what it does against the fret; learn that and then you can add the effects later on,” he said.
In his typically philosophical style, speaking about the guitar with a sort of wanton sultriness, he continues, “You know, if you want to be a guitar player you have to have your grounding. It’s like anywhere else. I mean, an astronaut doesn’t start in space you know, somebody’s got to build a rocket.” While his analogy goes slightly awry there, the sentiment of having the basics in place before getting all fancy is something that rings true in every Stones riff.
And it’s his firm belief that his rhythmic right hand has allowed him to become “the riff master.” In his book, he says with pride, “I’m blessed with them, and I can never get to the bottom of them.”
And when it comes to the finest one he’s strummed out with his mercurial right hand, he says, “When you get a riff like ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ you get a great feeling of elation, a wicked glee. ‘Flash’ is basically ‘Satisfaction’ in reverse. Nearly all of these riffs are closely related. But if someone said, ‘You can play only one of your riffs ever again,’ I’d say ‘OK, give me ‘Flash.’”
