Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has shared his memories of the night that his hero Chuck Berry punched him in the face.
Richards tells the story in a new interview with The Guardian, in which he also salutes the timeless nature of Chuck Berry’s music. The Rolling Stones’ very first single, released in June 1963, was a cover of Berry’s Come On, and their forthcoming album, Foreign Tongues, concludes with a cover of Berry’s Beautiful Delilah.
“I loved his naturalness when he was playing, the way he moved – his whole body became part of the guitar,” Richards tells The Guardian‘s Alexis Petridis. “He made me focus on what was possible for me, at the time, which made my mother shell out for an electric guitar. I just felt a natural affinity for him, even though he was a cussed bugger.”
“He punched me once, years ago, in the 60s, I think,” Richards continues. “We were in his dressing room, I was having a peek at his guitar and I was just about to stroke it, and he went: ‘Nobody touches it!’ And bam! Quite right, Chuck! I would have done the same. I’ve never had to, but then I’ve never caught someone doing that.”
Richards has actually told variations of this story for years, cheekily citing the punch as Chuck Berry’s “greatest hit”. He shared another version with Rolling Stone magazine in 2017, following Berry’s death.
“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,” he said. “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 realized 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.”