1 Starting Out

CHAPTER 1 Starting Out Keith Richards and Mick Jagger were both born in 1943 in the town of Dartford, England. The country was in the middle of fighting World War II at the time. And Dartford had been the site of many bombings during the war. The fighting ended in 1945. But throughout their childhoods, Keith and Mick's neighborhood was still piled with crumbled pieces of bombed buildings.

Keith and Mick lived in the same neighborhood and went to elementary school together. But they were not close friends. Mick was outgoing, and Keith was quiet. Mick was a good student. Keith hated school. When their families moved to opposite ends of Dartford, the boys didn't keep in touch. As they grew older, they each developed a love of music. When Mick was fourteen, he got his first guitar. He spent a lot of time listening to music on the radio. In the mid-1950s, most people still listened to the same type of music their parents had before the war. But Mick tuned

the dial to faraway stations in Luxembourg and Germany that broadcast American music. Then Mick got a record player. Shops in England didn't always carry the music he wanted. So he ordered music directly from the United States. His records came mainly from

Chess Records in Chicago, Illinois. Chess was a recording studio that worked with Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and other American musicians that Mick liked.

On the other side of Dartford, Keith was greatly influenced by his musical family especially by his grandfather, who had been a bandleader and had played guitar. Keith got his first guitar as a present for his fifteenth birthday. He, too, listened to American musicians and singers, like Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley, on the radio. He sometimes hid his small radio in his bedcovers so he could listen to music at night. Even though his radio didn't always get good reception, he heard something new and exciting in American music. It was the beginnings of rock and roll. "The music came across the airwaves, and suddenly it felt as if the world was actually changing," Keith said.

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