Yesterday (December 18th) was Keith Richards birthday … and although many may think that Keith can lay claim to the line “I’ve been alive forever … and I wrote the very first song,” he actually only turned 80. (I think we all know that he’s probably lived a dozen lifetimes in those 80 years … almost like the cat with nine lives!)
THEN ...
AND NOW ...
In 1999, Harvey Kubernik had the opportunity to interview Keith in conjunction with his new “Wingless Angels” album … and he’s given us the opportunity to run that interview again here in Forgotten Hits.
Naturally, talk also turned to The Rolling Stones’ then current state of affairs …
During the 1997-1998 American tour, I spoke with Keith Richards about his Wingless Angels album and the Rolling Stones.
One evening at Ocean Way Recording Studios in Hollywood the Stones’ guitarist / singer / band leader explained to me a new recording project he had just done with Rob Fraboni in Jamaica called Wingless Angels, a collection of five Nyabinghi Rastafarian drummers and Sister Maureen in drum, chant and vocal forum. Richards also serves as executive producer on the “Wingless Angels” just out offering, and it appears on his own Mindless Records / Island label. “I’ll talk to you ‘bout it when we (Stones) tour,” he promised.
Q: When I last saw you during The Rolling Stones’ recording sessions at Ocean Way in Hollywood, you mentioned you were co-producing with engineer Rob Fraboni a collection of five Nyabinghi Rastafarian drummers and Sister Maureen. Now, “Wingless Angels,” which you served as executive producer for your own Mindless Records / Island Records label has just been released. It’s a recording of Rastafarian drum and chant sessions.
A: They sing like angels, but they can’t fly. I’m referred to as Brother Keith. The label emerged out of the recording. This started after the ‘Voodoo Lounge’ tour. Recorded in my front room. It’s evolved over the years, and each time I visited Jamaica I would drum and chant with the Rasta bred’ren. The recording was done on HDCD, with like four microphones, and you can hear frogs, crickets around the weed. (laughs). Actually, the Wingless Angels come from Steertown, and you might know the work of one of the members, ska legend Justin Hinds, years ago had the Dominoes’ “Carry Go, Bring Home.” A vocal harmony group. The drums are kept at my house (in Ocho Rios) in the hills of Jamaica. These are ‘healing meditations.’ They’ve been friends and family for over 25 years. They like to play, and are full of life and energy.
Q: During the recent Stones’ “Bridges To Babylon” tracking sessions, I remember you and Rob talking to Charlie in the studio about applying some of the drum set ups you utilized during “Wingless Angels” to the Bridges To Babylon” sessions. Like putting the front head back on the bass drum. Charlie Watts’ drum head.
A: Yea! I was working with Rob Fraboni, the same guy who recorded “Wingless Angels,” which was primarily recording their drums and voices, and you become particularly intent on getting them right, ya know. And the fact is there’s two heads on those drums and we figured out how to get a certain sound. Whereas in recording studios, 99 1/2 per cent of the time, the engineer will have the front head of the bass drum taken off, and they stuff cushions in it and they ram microphones down it, and actual fact, deadens the drum. That’s the easiest way to record a bass drum. And we wanted to record like a real bass drum. Charlie (during ‘Babylon) was very receptive. “Can you do that? It’s been so many years since I’ve actually recorded with the skin on the front.”
Q: Do you get a more natural drum sound. Like can I hear it on the song ‘You Don’t Have To Mean It’ from “Bridges To Babylon?”
A: There’s no doubt, that while recording the Angels that a drum is a cylinder with two skins on either side, and that’s what really gives it a special sound. And I never realized that we were cutting like drummers, especially Charlie off from a whole half a drum. (laughs).
Q: How else did the “Wingless Angels” recording impact your recording activities as well as your work in the studio with The Stones?
A: With the Angels, I got very interested in ambient recording. The room is good if you know what you’re doing. Use as few microphones as possible. All the tinkering, splitting things up can never achieve. The whole idea when you play music is to fill the room with sound. You don’t have to pick up each individual instrument, particularly in order to do that. Because a band is several people playing something. And somewhere in the air of the room, that sound has to gather in one spot. And you have to find that spot. (smiles).
Q: Are there advantages in knowing musicians who you know for 25 years and then record with them?
A: Yes. I’ve known them for a long time. That’s the main answer. It was only years later that I was really filled in on the fact that they’ve never ever accepted anybody to play with them before. Black or white, or with an instrument. They were purely voice and drums. Over the years they invited me, and I don’t know why. They didn’t know who I was when I first met them, if that means anything. The Rolling Stones meant nothing to them. They’re fisherman divers who live in corrugated land shacks and The Rolling Stones are not the first things on their menu, ya know.
Q: Do you like to write and record in Jamaica. I know the Stones’ “Goat’s Head Soup” was recorded in 1973 there. I totally dig the guitar in “Heartbreaker” by the way, even though it’s out of tune with the electric piano. Maybe that’s the idea
A: (laughs). Yea. It’s very easy to write in Jamaica. I don’t find it difficult to write anywhere. But in Jamaica, it’s particularly easy because they are so musically oriented, the Jamaicans. I mean, to be quite honest with you, the Jamaicans do nothing without music. Which for a musician is fantastic! Because, even if you’re not playing music in your own house, you can hear half the town below in little villages and there’s music playing. They do everything to music. It’s an open environment when we record. You can hear the rain on the recording.
Q: What did you gain from the initial recording of the “Angels” CD?
A: When you’re recording something as seemingly simple of just drums and voices, for the first few days, microphone placement is very important. We’re trying different angles. You never point the microphone actually at the instrument. You’ve got them in the corners pointing and once you’ve found those placements, you don’t really change them. One of the joys of it was that you’re not really aware that you’re actually making a record. Yes, you are recording but at the time I was recording it I had no particular outlet for it. I mean as I mentioned, Chris Blackwell came by that evening, “if you finish this, I’d love to put it out. You know, the whole thing was sort of handed to me mysteriously from above, ya know.
Q: For years I’ve been aware of Rob Fraboni’s engineering and producing. I know he did a little bit of work on “Goat’s Head Soup” in Los Angeles at Village Recorders. He also did Bob Dylan’s “Planet Waves,” and engineered and produced a lot of reggae. Rob did a lot of engineering and mixing as well on “Bridges To Babylon.” What attracts you to his board work?
A: He knows an awful lot, man, about recording. He knows a lot about microphones and I’ve worked with him off and on for 25 years. Many years we didn’t work together. Rob Fraboni is the only engineer I know, apart from, or maybe even Jamaican ones that knows these guys (Wingless Angels) for 15 odd years, ya know. The only guy who the Angels know so there’s no like strangers in the room to inhibit the process. It has to have that feel. That’s why we left on all the talk and some of the laughs.
Q: Have you, obviously of all people, noticed that time stands still when “Wingless Angels” is being played. Maybe it’s the Jamaican location of recording.
A: I think because it’s timeless music. I mean, I’ve had African guys say, “This is more African than what is going on in Africa.” I call it ‘marrow music.’ Not even bone music. It strikes to the marrow. It’s like a faint echo . . . The body responds to it and I don’t know why. You asked me earlier about ‘Goat’s Head Soup.’ I was only really learning about Jamaica then and when you’re making records, you’re pretty much myopic. And it was only really after recording ‘Goat’s Head Soup’ and staying in Jamaica for several months, which was when I bumped into the Angels on the beach. And we got talking and playing. But in certain ways, Jamaica doesn’t change that much. There’s a very solid rhythm to life there, which they seem to be able to adapt to even incoming technologies that speed the rest of the world up. What I really love I think about Jamaica is that they have a rhythm all their own and everybody, including yourself after a few days you can’t get out of step, man, you know.
Q: What’s the best way or atmosphere to hear “Wingless Angels?”
A: Flat on your back, with some partners, rum and weed. (laughs).
Q: Let’s talk about The Rolling Stones.
A: Surely.
Q: I’ve seen both outdoor and indoor shows and the sound fills the stadium. How has the tour been going?
A: Fantastic, man. The stadium parts have been great. I’ve never known a tour to go . . . You kind of accept usually when you start a tour for it to have its high points and low points and you start to go for a happy medium, and hope there’s more high points than low. But this one is not like this. Very strange, but since Chicago, day one, the band and the sound, and the whole feel of it has gone on a steady upward plane. The graph looks amazing. As far as the band’s feeling good, I think it’s got a lot to do with the new sound system, and with Robbie McGrath, the mixer, has really got our live thing down. I mean we’ve got the guitars where we want them. But I think it’s a mixture of that and also the experience of the band.
Q: Did the “Wingless Angels” experience have an impact on the way you play with The Stones now on this tour? I think and hear it in the live show more holes, a little bit.
A: I’m playing a little different on this (new) tour. Yea. I’m more conscious of dynamics. It’s exactly what it’s about. To make a record like the Wingless Angels, ‘Oh this is a great little pastime . . . a hobby’ when you’re doing it. You are not thinking in terms of that. But when you’ve finished it, you realized that you’ve learned a whole lot about recording and music from like ten guys or so who live up in the hills in Jamaica and they’ve taught me, or re-taught me, or reminded me of like the spaces that can be left and that silence is your canvas and never forget it.
Q: And playing on the second stage? A smaller place right in the middle of the stadium for a set of tunes that I know really involves the audience. Not that they haven’t gotten their ass kicked from the gigantic full stage show they’ve also seen.
A: It’s beautiful, great. It’s another thing. Once you’re on the stage it’s just some floor boards in spite of it. And you’re not really aware of everything you are seeing. But what really keeps tours going and alive for the band and therefore for the audience I think is to change it and to play the smaller joints indoors. And the small stage with the show. It’s necessary to change the scale sometimes. Otherwise, you can really get used to the large thing. And you realize when you’re playing a small gig that you get dynamics back and you can re-translate that back to the big stage.
Q: When you and The Stones were recording ‘Bridges To Babylon,’ did you know immediately that some of the songs would really work well in the live show.
A: With these new Mick songs, like the things done with The Dust Brothers, I like to get my hands on them live. We’ve rehearsed “Too Tight” as well. In a way, maybe when you write songs without even knowing it you’re kinda saying, “Can I do this live?” And so, in a way you add that in. You don’t know if it’s gonna work, but I guess you keep in the back of your mind is ‘We’re making a record here.’ What happens if they all like it and we gotta play it live? So in a way, that maybe in the back of the mind it sets up the song to be playable on stage.
Ultimate Classic Rock ran a year-by-year photo scrapbooks of Keith Richards, 1963 - 2023 ... SIXTY YEARS on top of the world as one of the most recognized guitarists on the planet ... and one half of one of the most successful songwriting duos of all time.
Happy Birthday, Keefer! (kk)
MORE STONES NEWS …
We’ve already told you about the new Rolling Stones coffee table book, “Icons,” for which Harvey also wrote the introduction.
And then there’s this …
A VERY cool Stones collectible!
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NOTE: There are a limited number of Rolling Stones Singles, 1963 – 1966 box sets still available … but they’re going fast … and are sure to become a collectors item. (kk)
 Mixing in the old and the new, The Rolling Stones ALSO have a new, expanded “live” edition of their latest LP, “Hackney Diamonds” available …
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LOTS of NEW stuff from a bunch of old guys!!! (lol)
But truth be told, The Rolling Stones have never sounded better! (kk)
60 YEARS AGO TODAY:
12/19/63 – Famed newscaster Edward R. Murrow retires after being diagnosed with lung cancer. He will die sixteen months later.
