Keith Richards: New Rolling Stones record coming next year

In a 2010 New Yorker profile, writer David Remnick even marveled that “through it all, the Grim Reaper was denied a backstage pass”. Richards and his X-Pensive Winos cohorts, including co-producer Steve Jordan, also work their way through reggae (Gregory Isaacs “Love Overdue”), R&B (the defiant “Nothing On Me”), roadhouse rave-ups (“Amnesia, ” “Blues in the Morning”) and genuinely intimate tender balladry (“Robbed Blind, ” “Lovers Plea”).

He told The Guardian newspaper: “I watch the wife garden”. I mean, I’m blessed with being sort of physically robust.

Richards has been busy the last decade or so – touring the world, writing a best-selling autobiography and a children’s book, and even popping up opposite Johnny Depp in a Pirates Of The Caribbean sequel.

“This is the thing with the Stones”. So, this year, Richards tried something he’s only done twice before: put out a solo album.

The film follows Keith, 71, on the road from New York to Chicago to Nashville as he records his new album Crosseyed Heart, but he said the film happened unexpectedly. Over its 15 tracks, “Crosseyed Heart” revels in the wide-ranging musical schizophrenia that is the Rolling Stones guitarists stock in trade.

“Mick and I joust with each other all the time”, Richards chuckled earlier this year. Actually, I love my old lady, and she can make me do anything.

Speaking on the red carpet, he said: “I just thought I would make a record and halfway through they said they would make a video and then it grew into a documentary, it was organic”. “And what you realise when you get older is, you never stop growing up”.

One place where he and Jagger have always found common ground, however, is in their love for the blues.

Twenty-three years may have passed since his last solo album, but Keith Richards professes to be “still the same” on “Just a Gift, ” a keening, confessional ballad from his return to duty.

Music fans know where the story goes from there. “Under the Influence” explores how once the Rolling Stones because famous they helped reignite interest in American blues. “Right? That’s agreed. OK boys, that’s agreed.’ Where, when – [we] scratch our heads”. Thankfully, it seems like no amount of moss is enough to slow down these Rolling Stones. “Some English band turns up, and turns America on to its own great music”.