Keith Richards (born 18 December 1943), identified as Keith Richard during much of the 1960’s, is an English musician, singer, songwriter, actor, and one of the original members of the rock band The Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone Magazine credited Richards for “rock’s greatest single body of riffs” on guitar and ranked him 4th on its list of 100 best guitarists. Fourteen songs that Richards wrote with the Rolling Stones’ lead vocalist Mick Jagger are listed among Rolling Stone magazine’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”. The Stones are generally known for their guitar interplay of rhythm and lead (“weaving”) with Brian Jones, Mick Taylor and Ronnie Wood over the years. In spite of this, Richards plays the only guitar tracks on some of their most famous songs including “Paint It Black”, “Ruby Tuesday”, “Sympathy for the Devil”, and “Gimme Shelter”. (More from Wikipedia)
Much of the overheated rhetoric about J. Reuben Silverbird is about his name changes; even the minor switch from Ruben to Reuben is mentioned. Using stage names is hardly limited to rock musicians – the very term itself shows that its origin is in the theatre. You needn’t go any further than the drummer for the Beatles to find one: Ringo Starr (born Richard Starkey). Guitarist and songwriter Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones used the name Keith Richard for many years. The John Birch Society called Stones frontman Mick Jagger “Mick Jaeggert” back in the 1970’s; a Google search brought up only two websites using this name – one French and one Hungarian – so this is probably not for real.
(August 2013)
Anyway, Mick Jagger was about the only member of the band who was generally well known by name among the kids that I knew, with Keith Richards less so. Actually he wasn’t even Keith Richards in the early part of the band’s history; as explained in Wikipedia: “After the Rolling Stones signed to Decca Records in 1963, their band manager, Andrew Loog Oldham dropped the ‘s’ from Richards’ surname believing ‘Keith Richard’ in his words ‘looked more pop’. In the early 1970’s, Richards re-established the ‘s’ in his surname.”
(May 2015)
