KEITH RICHARDS: UNDER THE INFLUENCE
Netflix, 3:00 a.m. ET
Dead man rockin! Well, Keith Richards isn’t dead yet – he may be, at this point, rock and roll’s most unlikely survivor – but he opens this documentary profile by admitting he never thought he’d live past 30. Or that he wanted to, he adds, until he turned 31, and then it didn’t seem so bad to stick around. Under the Influence is released by the Rolling Stones guitarist’s record label – as is a new solo album, Crosseyed Heart, which comes out today. Richards pulls out old albums by Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry to show his, and the Stones’, earliest musical influences, and then we see vintage, super-early Stones, performing a Waters blues cover on Hollywood Palace – after which host Dean Martin rolls his eyes and says, dripping with sarcasm, “The Rolling Stones, aren’t they great?” Richards recalls, in particular, the segregated south when he and the Stones first toured the United States, and there’s vintage behind-the-scenes footage to match. It’s not all a nostalgia trip in this new Netflix documentary, but there’s enough music, insight and sidelights to make this an enjoyable profile. As Tom Waits says here of Richards, “He’s like a London cabbie who has ‘the knowledge’ – except he has that in music.”