Do we like Keith Richards?
Our score: 7 out of 10. No harmful words or company found, a clean run since the late 1970s and some real good, but the record I could open is thin.
Keith Richards turned eighty in December 2023 and is still the Stones' riff-making engine. He grew up in Dartford, Kent, and spent six decades as the guitarist that half the world's bar bands are trying to be. Mate, the man is a walking museum of rock and roll.
His legal history is the stuff of legend, and it is old. After a drug raid on his English country house he and Mick Jagger were convicted, Keith getting twelve months, and both later won their appeals. In 1977 Toronto police charged him with possession of heroin and cocaine with intent to traffic, which carried a minimum of seven years if proven. He pleaded guilty to possession in 1978 and was sentenced to a charity concert for the blind, after a blind fan reportedly told the judge he had arranged taxis for her.
On the harm test, I went looking and came back mostly empty-handed. No remarks against gay or trans people turned up, nothing demeaning migrants or people of colour, and no slide into conspiracy theories. In a 2026 Sunday Times interview he called the US “a bit of a disappointment at the moment”, which is hardly culture-war grift. To be fair, that's a thin record, not a deep one.
The recent stuff is mostly about work. Foreign Tongues is the Stones' 25th studio album, and Keith told the AP in May the band would not tour this year, but “We can talk next year.” Nothing there to worry a family news page.
In 2023 a songwriter sued Jagger and Richards in a New Orleans federal court, alleging that their single Living in a Ghost Town borrowed from two of his songs. That is an allegation in a civil suit, and the article I read carries no response from the pair. It is a copyright squabble, not a character issue.
The good stuff is real if not dramatic. In March 2025 Connecticut's Governor Ned Lamont gave him the inaugural Governor's Award of Excellence, with a key to the state, and Keith said he'd been there “for 40 years” and it had been a great place for him. He also told the crowd it was important to keep books “unburnt”, which is a decent line from a bloke with his past.