After graduating, Richards befriended Jagger, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts, Ian Stewart and Brian Jones and joined the Rolling Stones.

[20][21][22] Recruited by Dartford Tech's choirmaster, R. W. "Jake" Clare, he sang in a trio of boy sopranos at, among other occasions, Westminster Abbey for Queen Elizabeth II.

[29] The mail-order rhythm and blues albums from Chess Records by Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters that Jagger was carrying revealed a mutual interest[30][31] and led to a renewal of their friendship.

In the recording studio Richards sometimes plays all of the guitar parts, notably on the songs "Paint It Black", "Ruby Tuesday", "Sympathy for the Devil", and "Gimme Shelter".

[41] In 1975 Taylor was replaced by Wood, whose arrival marked a return to a guitar interplay Richards called "the ancient art of weaving", which he and Jones had gleaned from Chicago blues.

[59] The earliest Jagger/Richards collaborations were recorded by other artists, including Gene Pitney, whose rendition of "That Girl Belongs to Yesterday" was their first top-ten single in the UK.

The first top-ten hit for the Rolling Stones with a Jagger and Richards original was "The Last Time" in early 1965;[61] "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (also 1965) was their first international number-one recording.

Their songs reflect the influence of blues, R&B, rock and roll, pop, soul, gospel, and country, as well as forays into psychedelia and Dylanesque social commentary.

He was credited as producer and musical director on the 1966 album Today's Pop Symphony, one of manager Andrew Loog Oldham's side projects, although there are doubts about how much Richards was actually involved with it.

[68][69][70] Since the 1980s Richards has chalked up numerous production and co-production credits on projects with other artists including Aretha Franklin, Johnnie Johnson, and Ronnie Spector, as well as on his own albums with the X-Pensive Winos (see below).

[72] Additional members of the X-Pensive Winos included guitarist Waddy Wachtel, saxophonist Bobby Keys, keyboardist Ivan Neville, and Charley Drayton on bass.

Notable exceptions were when Richards, along with Mick Jagger and numerous other guests, sang on the Beatles' 1967 TV broadcast of "All You Need Is Love",[73] and when he played bass with John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, Ivry Gitlis, and Yoko Ono as the Dirty Mac for The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus TV special filmed in 1968.

Bad, which he also co-produced; and lead vocals and guitar on "Oh Lord, Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me" on the 1992 Charles Mingus tribute album Weird Nightmare.

[96] Eleven days prior to its release, the Associated Press published an article stating that in the book Richards refers to Jagger as "unbearable" and notes that their relationship has been strained "for decades".

[101][102] The first trial – the only one culminating in a prison sentence[102] – resulted from a February 1967 police raid on Redlands, Richards's Sussex estate, where he and some friends, including Jagger, were spending the weekend.

[115] Although the prosecution had filed an appeal of the sentence, Richards performed two CNIB benefit concerts at Oshawa Civic Auditorium on 22 April 1979; both shows featured the Rolling Stones and the New Barbarians.

[119] Richards owns Redlands, a Sussex estate he purchased in 1966, as well as homes in Weston, Connecticut, and in the private resort island of Parrot Cay, Turks & Caicos.

[130] The dish was also mentioned by Richards in his autobiography, advising readers to add more onions after cooking the meat filling to enhance the pie's flavour.

In a video message in late 2013 as part of the On Fire tour, Richards gave his thanks to the surgeons in New Zealand who treated him, remarking, "I left half my brain there.

[137][138] This combination of influences originally raised concerns with Disney corporate executives, who questioned if the character was supposed to be drunk and gay, with Michael Eisner fearing that he was "ruining the movie".

[141] In a 2015 interview with the New York Daily News, Richards expressed his dislike for rap and hip hop, deeming them for "tone deaf"[50] people and consisting of "a drum beat and somebody yelling over it".

[142][143] In the same interview he called Metallica and Black Sabbath "great jokes" and bemoaned the lack of syncopation in most rock and roll, claiming it "sounds like a dull thud to me".

[145] Richards's choices consisted of his favourite 1960s comedy shows, cartoons and thrillers, interspersed with interviews, rare musical performances and night imagery.

After the earliest success of the band, who played cover songs of American blues artists, while he and Jagger were just beginning their own songwriting, the Rolling Stones visited the States to pay back, in his words, "that's where that fame bit comes in handy".

[73] On 26 February 2012 Richards paid tribute to fellow musicians Chuck Berry and Leonard Cohen, who were the recipients of the first annual PEN Awards for songwriting excellence at the JFK Presidential Library in Boston, Massachusetts.

[146] Richards is interviewed on screen and appears in performance footage in the 2005 documentary film Make It Funky!, which presents a history of New Orleans music and its influence on rhythm and blues, rock and roll, funk and jazz.

[148] In an April 2007 interview for NME magazine, music journalist Mark Beaumont asked Richards what the strangest thing he ever snorted was,[149] and quoted him as replying: "My father.

In March 2008, the fashion house Louis Vuitton unveiled an advertising campaign featuring a photo of Richards with his ebony Gibson ES-355, taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz.

[96] Richards appeared in the 2011 documentary Toots and the Maytals: Reggae Got Soul, which was featured on the BBC and described as "the untold story of one of the most influential artists ever to come out of Jamaica".

[203] Some of his notable amplifiers are: In 1965, Richards used a Gibson Maestro fuzzbox to achieve the distinctive tone of his riff on "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction";[207] the success of the resulting single boosted the sales of the device to the extent that all available stock had sold out by the end of 1965.