My Date With Keef, Part 2: The Interview
'“He passed it on” is the best epitaph that any musician can have.'
In part 1 of My Date With Keef, a.k.a. "the best day's work I ever got paid for," I set the scene for what was meant to be a brief 20-minute interview with Keith Richards for Rapido television, back in the spring of 1989. I was still quite new to New York City, Keith was ostensibly still promoting his sole solo album, Talk Is Cheap, and I was warned that if I shifted the conversation over to Keith’s very public battles with Mick Jagger over the future of the Rolling Stones – despite the fact that Keith was flying to Montserrat the following day to begin recording the album that would become the Stones’ Steel Wheels - the interview would be cut short.
But we were at Keith’s triplex, on 4th and Broadway in busy downtown Manhattan, and when we were introduced, Keith seemed perfectly at ease, disarmingly friendly, breakfasting on Jack and coke and seemingly in no hurry to pack.
And so, reading the room, then once the cameras rolled, I figured that if Keith thought anything was off limits he’d tell me soon enough for himself, decided to ask about the Stones anyway after a few softballs, as you will see below, and what was meant to be 20 minutes turned into 90, during which time Keith even picked up an acoustic to play us a song at one point. Even when we were done, and we dared ask for some “B-roll,” he didn’t hesitate to accept, inviting us upstairs and out to a deck festooned with kids toys, where we hung further. At the end of it all, mildly worse for wear after a couple of lunchtime Jack and cokes myself, I went home and typed out an invoice. Truly, I could not believe my good fortune.
That said, the story wouldn’t be worth retelling if the interview was not a good one. Nor do I think that Keith would have let it run so long if he didn’t feel he was having a good conversation. I’m not sure to what extent I take any credit for putting him at ease; in fact, I’m surprised he didn’t kick me straight out, given the ridiculous ponytail I had at the time - but hey, maybe he just appreciated having a fellow Englishman to talk to. Or perhaps he was in an unusually good mood, eager to talk before sequestering himself away with the band for a while. Maybe all his interviews are this good. Or else I just got lucky. Then again, I may also just possibly have known what I’m doing. Regardless, what I want you to picture of Keith as you read the following is an incredibly relaxed, good-natured, amiable, sociable conversationalist, chuckling and laughing and generally exuding the air of a man who had won the lottery in life and didn’t mind sharing the secret, or at least the Jack Daniels.