From an early age, The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards knew he wanted to seek a career as a professional musician. Playing the guitar was more than a hobby for him; it was his calling, and one song was the instigating factor in Richards’ decision to pour every thinking hour of the day into pursuing his dream.
When Richards was growing up, rock ‘n’ roll was hard to discover, and it wasn’t until bands like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones emerged that it became easily accessible to the masses. As a child, it was jazz that made Richards fall in love with music as an art form, thanks to his mother, Doris, who constantly listened to the radio in the family home.
After being exposed to jazz artists such as Louis Armstrong and Billie Holiday, The Rolling Stones axeman developed a desire to hear as much music as possible. The growth of the pirate radio station Radio Luxembourg was crucial for Richards and turned him onto different sounds, which had a seismic impact on him.
Writing in his memoir, Life, Richards recalled: “I think the first record I bought was Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally”. Fantastic record, even to this day. Good records just get better with age. But the one that really turned me on, like an explosion one night, listening to Radio Luxembourg on my little radio when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, was ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. That was the stunner. I’d never heard it before or anything like it. I’d never heard of Elvis before. It was almost as if I’d been waiting for it to happen. When I woke up the next day I was a different guy.”
He added: “It was the first time I’d heard something so stark. Then I had to go back to what this cat had done before. Luckily I caught his name. The Radio Luxembourg signal came back in. ‘That was Elvis Presley, with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. Shit!”
From that moment on, Richards would listen religiously to Radio Luxembourg underneath the covers of his bed on a nightly basis whenever the signal permitted. It was his musical education, and Elvis was critical to the guitarist seeking out as much rock ‘n’ roll as he could possibly find. Soon enough, his whole personality revolved around music, and he’s never looked back since.
While Presley’s voice contributed to Richards’ love affair with rock ‘n’ roll, he was more endeared by Scotty Moore’s work on the guitar. Following Moore’s death in 2016, Richards poignantly said of the musician: “When I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, I knew what I wanted to do in life. It was as plain as day. All I wanted to do in the world was to be able to play and sound like the way Scotty Moore did. Everyone wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty.”
Listen to ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ below.
