The song Keith Richards said was forced out of him: “I was told to do it”
Keith Richards‘ solo albums are a lot like the man himself. Ramshackle, a little vague, but effortlessly charming in their own right. What really marks them out as interesting artefacts are the fact that, despite being made away from his home turf of The Rolling Stones, they’re still just as collaborative as anything he’s made with his Glimmer Twin, Mick Jagger.
It takes a rather enviable degree of understanding oneself to do that. He doesn’t use a record with his name on it to finally call the shots himself. He knows that he’s at his best with a sparring partner and brings in a whole lot of them just for his solo projects. It’s also a perfect example of the differences between Mick N’ Keef’s egos.
Jagger is exactly the opposite. A man who is just as much of a collaborator but cannot let anything on his solo albums be anything other than his own gospel. A control freak who finally has carte blanche to not listen to anyone but himself. Richards’ method is still an ego trip, to be clear. He’s still more or less clicking his fingers and expecting any blues or rock Godhead to drop everything to work on his record. He does actually want to listen to what they’ve got to say, though, and that’s not nothing.
Perhaps that’s why the guest list for Richards’ solo albums is so star-studded. The man has tapped up the likes of Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell, Mick Taylor and Norah Jones to help out on his solo albums, among many others. Those are just the people who help out with the music, too, as Keith Richards explained to Entertainment Weekly, there are guests who may not end up on the record itself, but still end up shaping the record hugely.
Which guest forced a song out of Keith Richards?
Richards’ 2015 album, the marvellously titled Crosseyed Heart, saw him take on Lead Belly’s folk standard ‘Goodnight Irene’. Considering it’s a staple of classic blues purists, Jack White tends to close out gigs he particularly enjoys with a cover of it, the only thing to wonder is what took Richards so long? Well, the answer to that question comes from the fact that it wasn’t his idea to do it.
When the interviewer asks what made him want to record the song, Richards says, “Tom Waits had sent me a book on Lead Belly. It had just arrived, and it was sitting on the table, and that same day my guitar man, Pierre, he came by with a 12-string guitar. And so I’m looking at the cover of this Lead Belly [book] and I’ve got this 12-string in my hand. I sort of went, ‘Tom, I can take a hint.'”
However, the version recorded by the likes of The Weavers and Frank Sinatra wasn’t up to Richards’ standard. In researching the song, Richards found out that “Usually, ‘…Irene’ is bastardized and smoothed over and stuff. I found the original Lead Belly lyrics, which are a bit raunchier than most, and I thought, I gotta get on this, man. It was as if I was told to do it.”
Which checks out, really. After all, if you’re going to listen to anyone about how to make a tribute to classic American blues music, Tom Waits would be very high up on your list.
