‘I’d listen to my body before it screamed for help’: Keith Richards on life as an 82-year-old great-grandad – and jousting with Mick Jagger

He did every substance imaginable – and got punched by Chuck Berry – but Keef’s still going strong. As the Stones knock out another new album, he explains why he’s rejecting AI in favour of ‘the old ways’

Keith Richards has just become a great-grandfather. “This is true! This is true!” he enthuses, video-calling from somewhere in the depths of the Hit Factory, the New York studio first patronised by the Rolling Stones 46 years ago when they were making Emotional Rescue. “It’s been a couple of weeks. It’s a new thing for me. But I’m a fantastic grandad,” he confides. “Great-grandadding is … I try to let them hang with me for as long as humanly possible, then I hand ’em back. I’ve been doing a lot of grandfathering in the last year or so. I’ve got three or four new ones, you know. When I say new, I mean … two or three years old. Or four. Or one, or maybe five.”

Hang on, that seems a little vague. He shrugs and explodes in a wheezy chuckle. “I lose track, you know.”
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