The guitar rebel turns 64

Happy Birthday to Rolling Stones co-founder Keith Richards, who turned 64 on December 18th. Richards, along with Mick Jagger, has written some of the most enduring and important songs of the rock era, including "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," "Gimme Shelter," "You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Brown Sugar," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Honky Tonk Women." "Tumbling Dice," "Waiting On A Friend," "Wild Horses" "Start Me Up," and literally hundreds of others.

Although many songs that were primarily written by Richards were sung by Jagger, over the years several of Richards vocal turns have become classics of their own, including "You've Got The Silver," "Happy," "Before They Make Me Run," "All About You," "Little T&A," and "The Worst," which was featured on The Sopranos.

Last year the Stones had to delay a portion of their European tour after Richards fell out of a tree while vacationing in Fiji, which resulted in two operations to relieve and drain the swelling from his brain. Earlier this year, Richards, whose drug use is legendary in the rock world, again shocked readers when he told the New Musical Express that, following his father Burt's 2002 death, he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine. After the story became front page headlines, Richards recanted the story and said that he was joking.

Richards says that for the Stones' last album, 2005's A Bigger Bang, writing the songs nose-to-nose with Jagger made a substantial difference in the quality of the material: [ Click to listen if you have a backstage pass] "Those songs have always been there. They pass through our whole career. Certainly to me, and I think to Mick, too, that the closer we work the better it gets. And we'd gotten so used to, after Exile (On Main Street), of having to get used to writing songs 3,000 miles apart that we sorta figured that was the modus operandi from now on. But this one once again proved us wrong. We don't know everything, man!"

Charlie Watts says that 45 years after the band forming, it's still Richards who is still the band's leader on stage: [ Click to listen if you have a backstage pass] "Keith is the groove that you follow. It's something I've always done -- it comes from the days of playing in clubs, where his amp was right by my left foot. It was the only thing I could ever hear."

Last summer, Richards announced that he will write his long-awaited memoirs, which will be published in 2010.
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