Keith Richards Talks Joint Recordings With Jack White

"If Jack wanted to [release] it, I'd probably say yeah," says Stones guitarist

By Patrick Doyle | News & Updates June 26, 2012

Keith Richards and Jack White have been friends for years, but in 2009 they collaborated professionally, spending time together in a recording studio. “I enjoy working with Jack,” Richards had said. ”We’ve done a couple of tracks.”

In a recent chat with RS, Richards addressed the possibility of the joint recordings being released one day. “I don’t know if [Jack] ever considered that it was actually, like, master cuts,” Richards now says. “But at the same time if Jack wanted to do it, I’d probably say, ‘Yeah.’”

“I know Jack pretty well,” adds Richards. “He’s a lovely player.”

Richards will travel to London for a Stones summit in July, where the band will discuss potential plans to record new material to mark their 50^th anniversary. “We’re going to talk about that in July and see,” he said. “I mean, I’d love to get some tracks down and see what songs we’ve got. And that goes along with part of getting the band back together and getting things moving. So I’d love to cut some tracks, yeah.”

For years, fans have speculated about whether White will produce the Stones, working the same magic he did with Loretta Lynn and Wanda Jackson. “That’s always a possibility,” Richards says. “The door is wide open.”

White first saw the Stones live when the White Stripes opened for them in 2002. “[I learned] how good they were,” White told David Fricke in his 2008 cover story with Richards. “You could see the comfort level between them, in Keith’s guitar playing and Ron’s slide playing. It’s impressive, man, when that confidence is exuded.”

White’s favorite Stones song? “‘Undercover of the Night.’ I love the guitar riff. I wanted to break the song down to just the riff and that shaky-maracas beat. But we worked on it for a second and got distracted, I guess.”

“You wouldn’t have loved the song so much,” Richards told White, “if you’d had to do the goddamned video for it.”