Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Just Call Him Keef


Maybe it's just because of my recent post on "Sister Morphine," but there has been a lot of interest lately in an old post of mine on Keith Richards' last name. The gist of that post was that Keith had his name changed to Richard by Andrew Loog Oldham, then eventually went back to Richards at some point. No one is quite sure when that latter switch happened; shortly after my original post, Joe opined:

I think you'll find him credited as "Keith Richard" on England's Newest Hitmakers, and "Richards' on everything else thereafter, though it may have lasted until "Aftermath."

Now Kinky Paprika has weighed in:

On my copy of 1974's "It's Only Rock n' Roll," which is either an original pressing or pretty close to it, he is credited as Keith Richards.

On my copy of 1976's "Black and Blue" (ditto) he is back to being Keith Richard.
Same deal for 1977's "Love You Live."

But here's what's really messed up:
On 1982's live album "Still Life," the writing credits are "Jagger-Richard" on the older songs and "Jagger-Richards" on the post-'78 material.
Couldn't the credits have been standardized in recognition that Richard and Richards were one and the same?


Kinky also offered up the above poster, signed by Keith with no S, dating to 1964 but possibly signed at a later date.

My guess now is that Keith unofficially switched back to Richards in the late 60s, but not officially until after 1978. I can't think of any other reason for the niceties of the Still Life credits. But I'm sure at this point that Keith doesn't even know.

1 comment:

Kinky Paprika said...

I bet Bill Perks got a quiet chuckle from the whole thing.