Keith Richards

The young family were soon forced to move when their house was destroyed by a V1 rocket in 1944. They ended up spending the rest of the war in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, but moved back in time for the young Keith to start attending Wentworth Primary School in Dartford in 1951. It was at this school when he became friends with a a young boy called Mick Jagger who shared Richards' interest in Rhythm and Blues music. It was around this time that Richards left the school choir, gave up being a Boy Scout, and took up playing the guitar.

In 1956, the pair split up as Jagger was sent to the local grammar school, and Keith was to attend Dartford Technical College. It wasn't long before Keith's disruptive behaviour started to get him in trouble, and in 1959 he was expelled for truancy, and ended up at Sidcup Art School, indulging his passion for art.

By pure chance, Keith met Mick again in 1961 on the train platform, Mick happened to be carrying some Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry records, which caught Keith's eye, and the pair struck up conversation, which ended up with them forming a band. By 1962, the group had begun calling themselves the Rollin' Stones, a name inspired by Muddy Waters' "Rollin' Stones Blues and were surviving by playing covers of Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Elmore James, and touring venues in in and around London including Ealing Jazz Club, Ken Colyer's Studio 51 and Eel Pie Island in Twickenham. Things really started happening when the pair recorded the classic "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". The riff was dreamt up in a motel in Florida whilst Keith was suffering a bad bout of insomnia, which passed as soon as he wrote the notes down.

The song was a massive hit, in the UK as well as in America, and was the first in a long series of hits which saw them dominate the charts on both sides of the Atlantic. Jagger and Richards gained themselves a reputation as the bad boys of rock and roll, and were soon dubbed the "Glimmer Twins." Keith was at the centre of a gathering cloud of controversy, which began with a 1967 arrest on trumped-up drug charges. Over the next decade, he was arrested ten times, with the most serious charge leveled in March of 1977, when he was arrested in Toronto, Canada for heroin possession, just narrowly avoiding jail.

After a feud between the band members, 'Keef' went solo for a while and released several records starting with the critically acclaimed 'Talk is Cheap' in 1988, and a live album both entitled "Keith Richards & The X-Pensive Winos Live At The Hollywood Palladium December 15, 1988" which were released in 1991. His second studio album as a solo artist, "Main Offender " was released in 1992. The band soon make up and continue touring together.

Richards has spent the past 17 years married to former model and ageless beauty Patti Hansen, after splitting from Anita Pallenberg in the 70's. He has four children, two from each marriage, and recently became a grandfather. Over his musical career he has picked up numerous awards including ABC's 'Living Legend Award"', the Billboard Charts award for 'Artistic Excellence', The Ivor Novello Award for 'Outstanding Contribution To British Music' and is also a member of the Rock n Roll 'Hall of Fame'

Keith claims that he wants his epitaph to be: "Fuckers! I told you I wasn't feeling well".

Sources
http://members.tripod.com/~Blue_Lena/history.html
http://home.swipnet.se/rollingstones/solo/richards/
www.stones.com