Keith Richards:
Cathy's Clown, So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad), Learning the Game
The Complete Honeymoon Tapes (bootleg, 1983)
How could a voice so fragile come from a body so indurate? Even after 20 years of playing in front of audiences, many of them the size of small towns, Richards still sung with the self-conscious hesitation of someone just starting out. The mighty Keith, chin to chest, whispering songs to the wall. At times, it seems like his voice might trail off into tears. There are few recordings as private or revealing.
Keith Richards’ marriage to Patti Hansen took place on his 40th birthday—December 18th, 1983—at the Finisterra Hotel, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. With his childhood friends and music biz comrades looking on, Keith serenaded his bride with a solo acoustic version of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Nearness of You.” He spent the last weeks of 1983 honeymooning in Cabo, enjoying the gentle breezes of Baja and recording dozens of songs on a portable tape recorder.
Maybe it was because of everything that was happening around him that Keith suddenly felt the need to confess to a lonely machine. His twenty-year-old band, after surviving the onslaught of punk, was on the verge of creative bankruptcy and personal dissolution. At age 40, his features and body were finally turning the corner from outlaw beautiful to crevassed, haggard, worn. In the middle of it all and against the tide, he’d found true love. Alone in his room (the bootleg credits on some tracks “an unidentified Mexican on backing vocals”), Keith played songs for comfort. He played Hank Williams and Merle Haggard. He played the Stones songs he was most proud of, including “Beast of Burden” and “No Expectations.” He played the hits by Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley and Little Richard, his companions since childhood.
More than anything else, Keith played song after song by the Everly Brothers and Charles Hardin Holley. It is heartrending to hear Richards returning to songs by these two particular artists in his moment of emotional upheaval. Buddy Holly and the Everlys were the idols of the idols of the 1960s (Lennon & McCartney, the Beach Boys), but they were left behind when rock and roll adopted delinquency for its image. The Everlys and Holly represented a tenderness and a vulnerability that didn’t fit the agenda of the counterculture revolution. Little Richard and Chuck Berry offer a thrilling high that will attract teenagers like Richards to the end of time; the Everlys, on the other hand, are on the verge of becoming an extinct influence. Hearing Richards render these songs with such tearful affection is like eavesdropping on the ruthless bandit who still sleeps with a locket from his first love.
In Richards, rock and roll found its pirate prince, someone who personified the culture’s ideals, namely an undying faith in playing it loud and loose. In public, he is a Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters fan til death; these are influences that suit his duty. In private, he played Hoagy Carmichael, Buddy Holly, and the Everly Brothers, artists that spoke directly to a heart his role as rock icon forced into hiding.
