CROSSEYED HEART
Recorded/mixed:
April 2011-2014: Germano Studios, New York City;
One East Recording, New York City;
Brooklyn Recording, New York City;
& Royal Recording Studios, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Producers:
Keith Richards & Steve Jordan
Chief
engineer: Dave O'Donnell
Mixers: Dave O'Donnell, Keith Richards & Steve Jordan
Released: September 2015
Original
label: Mindless Records (Virgin EMI)
Contributing musicians: Keith
Richards, Steve Jordan, Waddy Wachtel, Charles Hodges, Larry Campbell, Bernard Fowler, Ivan Neville, Bobby Keys, Paul Nowinski, Meegan Voss, Blondie Chaplin, Norah
Jones, David Paich, Pino Palladino, Clifton Anderson, Kevin Batchelor,
Charles Dougherty, Pierre DeBeauport, Spooner Oldham, Ben Cauley, Jack
Hale, Lannie McMillan, Jim Horn, Aaron Neville, Babi Floyd, Sarah Dash,
Harlem Gospel Choir.
Crosseyed Heart
Heartstopper
Amnesia
Robbed Blind
Trouble
Love Overdue
Nothing on Me
Suspicious
Blues in the Morning
Something for Nothing
Illusion
Just a Gift
Goodnight Irene
Substantial Damage
Lover's Plea
THE COVER
I didn't quit smoking, mate. I blame the
photographers for those other ones. I'd go through a pack just for them
to be able to get the smoke right for the photos. The photographers are
a bad influence on me.
-
Keith Richards, August 2015, on not smoking a cigarette on the cover
CREATION
It's the challenge. You're thinking about
whether or not you can carry the weight of the project. Are you biting
off more than you can chew? And did you want to chew that much in the
first place? Wrestling with the different context and doing all the
singing is something I enjoy immensely.
-
Keith Richards, August 2015, on choosing to make a solo album
After Keith did his book tour, he actually contemplated retirement. I told him, What are you talking about? That's ridiculous, don't ever bring that up again... I thought (the idea of Keith Richards
retiring was) the craziest thing I ever heard. He felt comfortable with
where he was and what he had done and what he had achieved. But knowing
Keith, to not have him pick up an instrument and play, it was weird.
When you're a musician, you don't retire. You play up until you can't
breathe.
- Steve Jordan, 2015, on encouraging Keith Richards to make the album
I've only ever done solo stuff when the Stones go
into one of their long hibernations. I suppose I started this one a
couple of years ago, because there was another long hibernation. I'd
just finished the book, and done all that thing, and I realised I
hadn't been in the studio for 4 or 5 years. I bumped into Steve Jordan,
he said, I've got a good room, a studio round the corner. He said to me, How did you record Street Fighting Man and Jumpin' Jack Flash? I said I was in the studio with Charlie Watts. In other words, just the drummer. He said, Well, there's nobody else around. Why don't we try that again? So it kind of started like that.
-
Keith Richards, July 2015
(Keith) felt rusty. But his facility started coming back to him,
and then the fire started to return, and the energy got ramped up, and
then all of a sudden we were making a record.
- Steve Jordan, 2015
I realised that it'd been a long time since I'd taken myself outside of the Stones' shack... I didn't really need
to do it, I just enjoyed doing it. It's an interesting way to work,
just me and Steve, which makes it fairly cheap. There's none of the
logistics involved in getting a whole band together, and after a while
it started to fall into a nice groove. Steve has to take an awful lot
of the credit for getting this album together. I almost have to be held
at gun-point to do solo stuff - someone has to persuade me very
convincingly to do it.
-
Keith Richards, August 2015
Some of (the songs) were actually hanging around, ideas from while the Stones were still recording. We left certain things off (A Bigger Bang), and I thought, I want to pursue that one.
-
Keith Richards, July 2015
(The
sessions were) very civilized... He hadn't played in a while, so we
took the recording sessions really slowly - bi-weekly to start with,
just a few hours... Which is very different from the other
albums, when we would start at midnight and end at 8 AM... We'd knock
about a tune he already had, maybe one he'd even cut a demo with in the
Stones.
- Steve Jordan, 2015
After about three or four months - we could only
do this once a week, sometimes once a month, really, there was no
"project" - we suddenly realized we had half an album. At that point we
said, We might as well go in for the whole hog.
-
Keith Richards, August 2015
I didn't want the record to be done as a band, like the last X-Pensive Winos record. My approach was, OK, let's do it like you did with Jumpin' Jack Flash or Street Fighting Man
- all those great Stones records, on which he played everything. The
thing we didn't get enough of in the past is Keith's bass playing -
he's a wonderful bass player and plays like no one one... The only
thing he can't do is play drums, which is quite fascinating actually,
he can't put two beats together. But that's great for me (laughs).
- Steve Jordan, 2015
Since it started off with just Steve and me, we'd lay down a guitar track with just guitar and drums and then say, Let's see what it sounds like we throw a bass on it.
And I am basically a closet bass player. I always have been. Sometimes
I wish I'd taken that up, but it wouldn't have worked out. Still, I do
love playing bass. And this was the perfect opportunity to do it. And
it was cheap as well, 'cause I don't pay myself.
-
Keith Richards, September 2015
We cut everything ourselves and then Waddy Wachtel came in for a couple of days.
- Steve Jordan, 2015
I was feeling more comfortable about singing. And
no, I'm not going to go to the top register all the time. The way my
voice is now, it's better down low. I know what I can do with it. I'm a
greater sing with a lousy voice. But I know there's a certain timbre
that my voice can touch. As long as I can do that, I'm happy.
-
Keith Richards, September 2015
From my point of view, any of these songs could just as well have been
Stones songs - if (the Stones) had been around at the time to record
them. It's just what I had available in my locker. There's a lot of
"hat's off" stuff here - to Robert Johnson, Gregory Isaacs, Otis
Redding, Leadbelly, of course.
-
Keith Richards, August 2015
Some of that you can't always express with
the Stones, you know what I mean? It's another outlet. I mean, I hadn't
realized it's been 20-odd years since I've done this. Time flies!
-
Keith Richards, July 2015, on the inclusion of many ballads
(T)here are a couple of ballads on here. I
suppose you don't get a lot of chance to explore that area with the
Stones. But when we have, we've done some great songs - yes, Angie, for one. There's that streak in me which is always, I'm very sorry I've just pissed off the most beautiful woman in the world. I'll get on my knees and beg, you know, Come on back!
But also that kind of writing strikes a chord in other people. That's
probably why I like country music - I like the melancholy, the yearning
bit, when they get it right. Like The Everly Brothers - that
beautifully crafted broken heart (laughs). That's what it's about, that
little arrow fired by Cupid.
-
Keith Richards, August 2015
I groan about my writing. There are times when I
wonder if what I've done is any good. So what I do in that situation,
and did a lot on the new album, is throw the song out to the other
musicians. You watch their eyes and see what the reaction is. And if
it's not good, you break a string on your guitar and you say, Well, forget that one.
-
Keith Richards, August 2015
The idea I had was, This should be a real solo album, a lot of Keith.
He doesn't necessarily think like that. He likes being in a band; it's
natural to him. He doesn't mind drifting off to the side and letting
someone else take the spotlight... The idea behind the abum was:
getting to know Keith more. The more of Keith the better. It's been
about capturing his personality and life on record... I was thrilled
throughout we could stay focused on Keith's playing - to me it's an
extension of his memoir.
- Steve Jordan, 2015
(T)he pleasure of it was - no deadline. We'll just do it until we're sure we've got something to deliver. And then it was, OK, you've finished it; now you can't put it out! (laughs)
So that took a couple of years... (J)ust as I finished it, the Stones
decided to go back on the road. So I've been looking for a space where
I could put it out. And in September (2015) we found it.
-
Keith Richards, September 2015
REVIEW EXCERPTS
Keith Richards took his time to complete Crosseyed Heart... Certainly, Crosseyed Heart hardly feels
like it was labored over; it's not the work of a perfectionist hoping
every element lands in its right place. It sounds like it was knocked
out in a week, which is about the highest compliment that can be paid
to a record as casual as this. Main Offender felt like the result of
endless hours of expensive studio jams, but Crosseyed Heart feels like
it fell into place, with its songs arising out of jams with a drummer
instead of being excuses for jams. Bookended by acoustic numbers -- the
first is the charmingly tossed-off title track, a song that feels
clipped in its conclusion, the last a version of Lead Belly's Goodnight Irene, with the lyrics slightly modified -- the album does
indeed bear the suggestion of a construction, a record that slides from
obsession to obsession without calling attention to transitions.
Nothing here is surprising, not the overdriven Chess boogie of Blues
in the Morning or the ska shuffle of Love Overdue, but that
familiarity is an asset, because Keith luxuriates in his detours so
much he winds up synthesizing his affections into a signature, a move
highlighted by the soulful crawl of the Norah Jones duet Illusion, a
song where both singers seem seduced by the slow groove. Illusion mildly recalls Make No Mistake, but where that Talk Is Cheap number
underlined its Stax connections, Crosseyed Heart isn't so edgy: Keith
no longer has to prove what he has to contribute to either the Stones
or the culture at large, so he settles into his favorite sounds, loving
to play the blues, rock & roll, country, and folk he's always
savored, then sliding into the open-chord boogie that's unmistakably
his. He may not forcibly claim this ground here but that's the appeal
of Crosseyed Heart: it's a winningly low-key record, where the
atmosphere matters more than the songs, yet Richards doesn't neglect
writing tunes this time around. 4/5
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide, September 2015
Keith Richards' first solo album since
1992 opens like a fever dream, with the 71-year-old rock god croaking
acoustic blues like Robert Johnson after burning down a half-ounce
spliff. But it's a feint. All right, that's all I got, he snaps just under two minutes in, before upshifting into his most eccentric and best-ever solo set. Crosseyed Heart is
the sound of Richards following his pleasure wherever it leads, with a
lean, simpatico team including longtime session pals Steve Jordan, Ivan
Neville and Waddy Wachtel backing him up all the way. Naturally,
there's a dip into roots reggae: Gregory Isaacs' 1974 lovers' rock
signature, Love Overdue, complete with brass and Neville's sweet backing vocals. There's also a straight read of Goodnight Irene,
a folk standard that Richards likely heard as a kid when the Weavers'
version charted in 1950. Two originals are as strong as any Stones
songs of recent decades: Robbed Blind, a Dead Flowers-scented outlaw-country ballad that echoes Merle Haggard's Sing Me Back Home, and Trouble,
all hiccup-riff swagger with a slide-guitar mash note from Wachtel to
ex-Stone Mick Taylor. There's a charmingly cheeky duet with Norah Jones
(Illusion), and some beautifully telling moments (see Amnesia)
where Keith's guitar is nearly everything — his sublime grooves
sprouting melodic blooms and thorny leads. It's proof that, at core,
dude's an army of one. 3.5/5
- Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, September 2015
In the Crosseyed Heart song Nothing on Me, Keith Richards reflects on his reputation as an outlaw: They laid it on too thick / They couldn't make it stick...
Although it's impressive that Richards can keep a grudge warm for over
40 years, the song also brings into focus a particularly rueful
sensibility that runs through the grain of Crosseyed Heart.
Principally, the songs here are concerned with betrayal, romance and
love lost; all delivered with the wisdom of Richards' accumulated
years... In that sense, Crosseyed Heart
has the warm, cask-aged feel of a late-period Dylan album. It's not
dark yet, but it's getting there: just time for the playful reckoning
with the myths, the ladies and the ones that got away... The best songs
have a(...) relaxed vibe to them. On Amnesia, that might be a distant, funkier cousin to Doom and Gloom - Keith dryly confesses: I didn't even know the Titanic sank. Elsewhere, Robbed Blind is carried along on a rolling piano and pedal steel that channels the melody from Dylan's Queen Jane Approximately... The rest of the LP is not perfect by any standards - some of the tracks, like Heartstopper,
feel like generic mid-tempo, Transatlantic rockers. Lyrically, Richards
sometimes relies too heavily on the Random Stones Lyric Generator...
But Richards has always worn his humour and his soul well, and those
qualities are sympathetically served here. If Crosseyed Heart is
an indciation of where a potential new Stones LP might one day go, then
this is the kind of record you'd wish they'd make. 7/10
- Michael Bonner, Uncut, October 2015
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