Keith Richards (b. 1943)
Filed under the name Keith · June 21, 2026
Keith Richards co-founded The Rolling Stones and is still regarded as one of the most influential guitarists rock music has ever produced, which is wild considering how long that band has actually been together at this point, decades longer than most bands even attempt to stay functional as a unit. I'm more of a K-pop and streaming-playlist person myself, rock history isn't exactly my specialty, but even I know his riffs, the kind of guitar parts that get sampled and referenced by artists who weren't born when the originals came out. There's something impressive about a body of work staying that influential for that long, especially in an industry that usually moves on from anybody pretty quickly once the next new thing shows up. Richards clearly built something with real staying power, technically and culturally, the kind of influence that keeps showing up in music made by people two or three generations removed from when he actually recorded it. That's a rare kind of longevity, no matter what genre you're talking about.