Why Stonesstar got nosatisfactionwith Jagger

The Rolling Stones guitarist details the pair’s ups and downs in his new memoir Life, chronicling their tense in-fighting and subsequent rapprochement.

Referring to a bad patch during the 1980s, he told BBC1’s The Andrew Marr Show: “In that period I had nothing to do with the running of the Stones. He assumed control, he assumed that he was the leader...

“When I said ‘give me some of the load, I’ll carry my load now’. It surprised me that instead of a sigh of relief, he didn’t want to relinquish one of the strings. It was the assumption that he was bigger than the Stones.”

The 66-year-old rocker acknowledged disagreements were inevitable over time and their creative partnership was enduring despite its flashpoints.

He said: “There is bound to be a point where friction comes into it.

“Nobody has the perfect marriage; you can’t expect it.

“But if we can get over that in one way or another then we will be a lot stronger for it, if we can heal the wounds.”

Richards revealed his first public gig was as part of the school choir in front of the Queen at Westminster Abbey, joking “after that the career went downhill”.

He spoke of how a bag of records under Jagger’s arm first caught his eye while on a train, sparking the start of their careers.

He said: “There was Mick with this treasure under his arm as far as I was concerned, the best of Muddy Waters and a Chuck Berry album called Rockin’ At The Hops.

“I knew these records only by their covers, we got talking and we were totally obsessed with the same things and the same music... we kind of made a deal there and then and the deal is still holding.”

He recalled how the fledgling blues band began performing at small venues which helped to shape Jagger’s trademark energetic strut.

He joked he would like his epitaph to be “I told you I was sick”.