Keith Richards says one instrument is the ‘most important’ for any guitar player to start with

The “most important” instrument a guitar player can start with is a guitar, according to Keith Richards.

A novel idea for any budding guitarist to start with a guitar, but Richards got a little more specific with what type of instrument to start off with in an interview with Noisey. The veteran rocker and The Rolling Stones‘ staple instrumentalist suggested those wanting to become electric guitarists actually start with an acoustic guitar instead. Not because there’d be competition with Richards’ riffs but because diving in at the deep end, playing like Chuck Berry, for instance, may put off those who cannot get to grips with the electric guitar immediately. Part of it also because guitarists can get a feel for the instrument better on an acoustic than electric, Richards claimed.

He explained: “I would say that the acoustic guitar is the most important thing for a guitar player to start with. Learn the feel and the touch of that string, and what it does against a fret. Learn that and then you can add the effects later on y’ know.

“If you want to be a guitar player, you have to have your grounding it’s like anywhere else. Being an astronaut doesn’t start in space, somebodies got to build a rocket.” Richards would comment in a separate interview that he had wanted to play with veteran musician Chuck Berry in his early years.

He said: “When I started, all I wanted to do was play like Chuck [Berry]. I thought if I could do that, I’d be the happiest man in the world. Then, when I found out I could do it, I thought, well maybe there is another aim in life.

“But when I started I’d dream of playing with Muddy Waters, but the only way I’d imagine it happening would be ‘if I make it to heaven—and he makes it there—then we can play together’.”

Richards would indeed play with Berry and eulogised the late rock and roll legend in an article written for Rolling Stone Magazine. Berry once gave Richards a black eye also, with The Rolling Stones’ guitarist explaining what happened in the tribute to Berry.

He wrote: “Chuck Berry once gave me a black eye, which I later called his greatest hit. We saw him play in New York somewhere, and afterward I was backstage in his dressing room, where his guitar was lying in its case.

“I wanted to look, out of professional interest, and as I’m just plucking the strings, Chuck walked in and gave me this wallop to the frickin’ left eye. But I realised I was in the wrong. If I walked into my dressing room and saw somebody fiddling with my ax, it would be perfectly all right to sock ’em, you know? I just got caught.

“He would do things like throw me offstage, too. I always took that as a reverse compliment, sort of as a sign of respect – because otherwise he wouldn’t bother with me.”