Keith Richards

Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and singer whose six-decade music career — primarily as the lead guitarist, principal songwriter, and co-founder of English rock band The Rolling Stones — has produced one of the foundational bodies of work in 20th and 21st-century international rock music. He was born Keith Richards on December 18, 1943, in Dartford, Kent, England. His father Herbert William Richards was a Royal Air Force veteran and electrical-engineering factory worker, and his mother Doris Maud Lydia Dupree was a homemaker.

His education at Dartford Technical School (1955–1959; without earning a degree) launched his early-career path. His October 1961 Dartford railway-station-platform encounter with Mick Jagger (whom he had previously known as a Wentworth Primary School classmate, after they had lost touch upon Jagger's 1954 family relocation to a more affluent Dartford neighborhood) — during which Richards saw Jagger carrying a Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records collection — produced his lifelong songwriting partnership with Jagger.

His April 1962 founding of The Rolling Stones with Mick Jagger and the lineup's subsequent 1962 completion with Brian Jones, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts launched his career. The June 7, 1963 first Rolling Stones single "Come On" (the Chuck Berry-cover) launched his 1960s English rock-music public profile.

His Jagger-Richards songwriting partnership across 1965–present has produced multiple foundational 20th and 21st-century international rock songs — particularly "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965), "Paint It Black" (1966), "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (1968), "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968), "Honky Tonk Women" (1969), "Brown Sugar" (1971), "Tumbling Dice" (1972), and "Start Me Up" (1981). His 1970s-and-1980s heroin-and-cocaine addictions and his subsequent 1980s rehabilitative recovery shaped his later biographical narrative. His later 60-year continuous touring-and-recording career with The Rolling Stones has continued through the 2023 album Hackney Diamonds. He has been with American actress and model Patti Hansen since 1979 (married 1983), and the couple has two daughters.

His name Keith derives from the Old Scottish-Gaelic place-name meaning "forest" or "battle place." Keith has been continuously among the most-popular American boys' names since 1880.