Keith Richards is chilling out at home, working on material for the new Rolling Stones album, and trying to ride out the pandemic. Richards shed some light on his creative process while in lockdown, telling Classic Rock that inspiration tends to hit while watching the tube: "Actually, the (guitar) sits next to my usual chair, and. . . I sit around writing songs, basically, or parts of songs, little bits. But I do tend to have moments and little periods of time during the day when suddenly I’ll pick up the guitar and something will come to mind."
When asked how the world shutting down in the wake of Covid has affected him, he admitted, "It's affecting me pretty much like it's affected everybody else. Y'know, we're all in this thing and I'm basically hunkering down with the family and a few friends, a bubble kind of thing, just like the rest of you, man. Wondering when we can get out of this thing. And, at the moment, it looks like it's going to be a hard winter. At the moment, I can't see any plan B coming."
Richards went on to say that at this point he Stones are all geared up and ready to work — but remained stalled in a waiting game: "I think it's all based on 'Let's get this thing over and done with as soon as possible.' Let's smarten up and. . . It's a rough one, man, because this thing is designed to keep us apart, and everything we want to do is be together."
Keith Richards explained that throughout all of the Rolling Stones' greatest works — no matter what distractions were outside the studio — the songwriting process remained free form and cosmic: ["You kind of tend to write songs no matter what else you're doing. I mean, it's not one of those things where you sit down and say, 'Oh! Songwriting time! It's just something that happens during the day. You might pick up a guitar to tune it — and before long you've got a song, if you're lucky. I never pushed songwriting, an idea comes in like an antennae — incoming transmit."] SOUNDCUE (:22 OC: . . . incoming transmit)
Keith Richards On Not Forcing Songwriting :
