I recently watched the documentary “Keith Richards: Under the Influence” on Netflix and highly recommend it.

 

Ol’ Keef has a face that “looks like 30 miles of bad road” as my friends in Arkansas used to say. He’s abused his body with every substance known to man… and probably a few that haven’t even been discovered yet. Yet he keeps on kicking. If you watch the documentary, you realize that part of that stems from the fact that he still has a childlike wonder at the magic of music. When he talks about being drawn to Mick Jagger at a train station when they were both teenage students, it was because Mick was carrying albums by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters… and you can tell Keith is still excited about those artists.

In some ways it’s a shame that the great R&B and blues artists from the U.S. had to be “repackaged” by British rock and roll bands. But as Buddy Guy mentions in the movie, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and other blues loving bands gave those older artists a second chance at success.