Keith Richards and Jack White have been friends for years, but in
2009 they collaborated professionally, spending time together in a
recording studio. "I enjoy working with Jack," Richards told Rolling Stone at the time. "We've done a couple of tracks."
In a recent chat with RS, Richards addressed the possibility
of the joint recordings being released one day. "I don't know if [Jack]
ever considered that it was actually, like, master cuts," Richards now
says. "But at the same time if Jack wanted to do it, I'd probably say,
'Yeah.'"
"I know Jack pretty well," adds Richards. "He's a lovely player."
Richards will travel to London for a Stones summit in July, where the band will discuss potential plans to record new material to mark their 50th
anniversary. "We're going to talk about that in July and see," he said.
"I mean, I'd love to get some tracks down and see what songs we've got.
And that goes along with part of getting the band back together and
getting things moving. So I'd love to cut some tracks, yeah."
For years, fans have speculated about whether White will produce the
Stones, working the same magic he did with Loretta Lynn and Wanda
Jackson. "That's always a possibility," Richards says. "The door is wide
open."
White first saw the Stones live when the White Stripes opened for
them in 2002. "[I learned] how good they were," White told David Fricke
in his 2008 cover story with Richards. "You could see the comfort level
between them, in Keith's guitar playing and Ron's slide playing. It's
impressive, man, when that confidence is exuded."
White's favorite Stones song? "'Undercover of the Night.' I love the
guitar riff. I wanted to break the song down to just the riff and that
shaky-maracas beat. But we worked on it for a second and got distracted,
I guess."
"You wouldn't have loved the song so much," Richards told White, "if you'd had to do the goddamned video for it."
