At 68, his fingers swollen and gnarled, he admits he can't remember the band's songs. After a lifetime of excess... Will Keith's growing frailty stop the Stones rolling?

By CHRISTOPHER WILSON

Published: 20:18 EST, 19 July 2012 | Updated: 21:08 EST, 19 July 2012

They say old men forget and — whisper it gently — at 68, Keith Richards can no longer be deemed young. So as the veteran Rolling Stone gears up for his last-ever tour, you can only feel sympathy for the old devil when he says he can’t remember his songs any more.

This week the Dartford-born rocker confessed: ‘[These days] when you kick off a song you say “I can’t remember how the middle bit goes”, but the fingers are able to perform all the correct chords on their own.’

This rare admission of frailty shields, however, a greater concern among friends and associates of rock ’n’ roll’s greatest ‘riffmeister’ — that the days of Keith’s scorching guitar solos are gone for ever.

Keith Richards on stage resembles a rather fragile and craggy figure these days, how much longer can he go on?

The Rolling Stones this year celebrate the 50th anniversary of their first gig. While there have been books and exhibitions and celebrations aplenty, there has been no manifestation of their core activity — making music.

Statements have been issued and retracted about the so-called 50th anniversary tour, plans have been made and abandoned.

Mick Jagger says there’ll be a tour — next year. Keith says the band is rehearsing. The organisers of Glastonbury Festival believe they’ve secured the Stones to play their swansong concert there next summer.

But nothing is certain.

For millions of fans, the band’s decision to quit is inexplicable. To have dominated popular music, across the globe, for half a century is a colossal achievement unmatched by any other group of musicians. And though the hits dried up some years ago, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards still know how to put on a world-class act.

So why stop now?

Richards needs his hands in tip-top condition if he is to play guitar on stage for 2-3 hours every night, but they are looking rather battered

Until recently, the hunger to go on — to sell more tickets, conquer new markets, find fresh corners of the earth to generate bigger attendance records — has remained undiminished.

Jagger, 69 next week, has a thirst for money and fame which, if anything, has increased with his advancing years. Richards, who is 69 in December, had always planned to rock until he dropped.

So where did the much-vaunted 50th anniversary global tour go, the one the Stones were supposed to be undertaking this year? Why did Mick and Keith stop taking Gary Barlow’s calls when he tried, again and again, to persuade them to headline the Queen’s Jubilee concert last month?

Why, after making so much noise for half a century, is there suddenly a deafening silence?

The answer, it would appear, lies with Keith.

It’s said among those who surround the Stones that the indestructible rocker, the man who made a pact with the Devil,  the godlike guitarist who consumed every chemical known to man and survived, has lost his musical mojo. Old age has withered him.

The hands which crafted a hundred timeless guitar riffs — from Satisfaction to The Last Time, from Honky Tonk Women to Jumpin’ Jack Flash — are no longer as sure as they once were.

Indeed, close-up pictures of his fingers reveal gnarled swellings on the top joints, leading to comparisons being drawn with the knobbly digits of Steven Spielberg’s E.T.

And those with a knowledge of Richards’ state of health marvel that he is still playing at all. Old age, and an accident six years ago, are to blame for the fading of the Keith Richards flame.

The Rolling Stones - Charlie Watts, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Mick Jagger - met recently to celebrate 50 years together

Now, in order to roll the Stones out on the road one last time, some urgent discussions have been taking place.

‘The problem is compounded by the fact that Ronnie Wood, his  co-guitarist, is only OK-ish these days,’ says one source.

‘Being a recovering alcoholic has made Ron a bit iffy as a player — and you can’t have two guitarists, in a band like the Stones, both playing under par.’

Discussions about contingency plans have apparently taken place including augmenting the band’s existing line-up of Jagger, Richards, Wood and drummer Charlie Watts with some old faces.

The name Mick Taylor, the replacement for original guitarist Brian Jones, has been mooted because he at least is reliable. Bill Wyman has been discussed as a replacement for bassist Darryl Jones, who’s been playing with the band since 1993.

‘They would then look something like the original line-up,’ says a source close to band, ‘which, after 50 years, would have some credibility — and would cover the essential weakness in the front line.’

To this end, Taylor, Wyman and Woods did a try-out at London’s BluesFest last month — playing blues during an evening to celebrate Sixties label Chess Records. They worked comfortably together, having played previously — with Watts — at a tribute concert in April 2011.

The fact that the Stones have let it be known they’re thinking of playing Glastonbury next summer suggests they think they have the problem licked — but as a group which has never in its half-century of history exhibited the merest hint of weakness, it’s a colossal gamble. 

Jagger and Richards are both keen to get back on the road, but is Richards health up to it?

To play the most visible musical event in the world with every note under scrutiny from a TV audience of tens of millions, is a high-risk strategy indeed.

There were high hopes that the Stones’ 50th anniversary tour — of which Glastonbury would be the pinnacle — would have beaten every record created by their last outing, the Bigger Bang tour, which lasted two years from August 2005 to August 2007, and sold 4.5 million tickets over 147 concerts across 118 cities in 32 countries. It grossed a staggering £355 million.

But their plans to make an even bigger bang this time have had to be drastically scaled back. Now, there will be just a ‘handful’ of shows in Britain and America to mark the band’s retreat from the world stage they dominated for so long. And even that is not confirmed.

However, if it is a cause for regret, they’re not saying. Neither is there any definitive word on what precisely the matter with Keith may be. But there are those who have been anxious for the guitarist’s health ever since he fell out of a tree in 2006, fracturing his skull and causing cranial bleeding which triggered two seizures.

A huge blood clot formed, threatening his life, and following an emergency airlift from Fiji to New Zealand, he was operated on by a gifted neurosurgeon, Andrew Law.

Richards, seen here in 1967 with Jagger in his prime, which seems a very long way away now his health is failing

Richards recovered, and within weeks resumed a postponed European tour with the Stones. He invited his surgeon over from New Zealand, and Dr Law recalls watching the band go onstage for Richard’s first performance since his near-death experience.

‘In Milan, he was nervous, and I was nervous,’ he said. ‘We were all worried. He might not remember how to [play], he could have a fit on stage. We were all very tense that night, everyone. Keith didn’t let on, but he came off the stage euphoric because he’d proved he could do it.’

Law is now a permanent part of the Stones entourage, his job to keep his eye on poor old Keith.

One happy consequence of the tree-fall was that Richards resolved to give up drugs: ‘Andrew Law told me in New Zealand — whatever you do, no more bump (cocaine), and I said OK. Actually, I’ve done so much bloody blow in my life, I don’t miss it an inch. I think it gave me up.’

But when, soon after the guitarist’s recovery, the Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese filmed the Stones in concert at New York’s Beacon Theatre and released Shine A Light, a film of their performance, many fans commented that Richards’ playing was often inaudible.

Richards has been a legendary hellraiser for decades, so it's no surprise his exploits seem to be catching up with him now

And since then, a different kind of silence has descended over the Rolling Stones. When I called the Stones’ office to  discuss the state of Richards’ health, I was given an outright denial that anything was wrong.

Yet the guitarist’s partial admission this week that he’s become forgetful tends to strengthen the belief his near-death experience did not leave him entirely unscathed.

Recently, Richards discussed his future: ‘I can’t retire until I croak,’ he said. ‘There’s carping about us being old men. White rock ’n’ rollers apparently are not supposed to do this at our age.’

Maybe he’ll get his wish to play until he drops, maybe not. At his various homes around the world, Keith Richards has a collection  of 3,000 guitars to accompany the hundreds of songs he has written. One of them, perhaps his greatest anthem, is Sympathy For The Devil.

Maybe it’s time for the tables to be turned and for the Devil to show a little sympathy for his gifted, wayward, and irreplaceable disciple.

And to grant him his greatest  wish — one last, barnstorming tour on the road with the greatest  rock ’n’ roll band in the world.