Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones occasionally plays lead lines, but he serves mostly as the band’s rhythm guitarist, preferring to weave his guitar lines with a second guitarist, a technique partially inspired by Chicago blues musicians. Richards often uses a five-string open G tuning, a banjo-inspired tuning in which the guitar’s lowest string is removed.
His primary instrument is a blond-bodied blackguard Fender Telecaster named “Micawber”—whose single-coil neck pickup was replaced with a double-coil one (to produce a thicker sound) and whose single-coil bridge pickup was replaced with a lap steel pickup.
The signature combination of blues musicality, open G tuning, and electronics modification has earned Richards the nickname “the Human Riff.” His playing style is influenced heavily by early 20th-century American blues players such as Robert Johnson and rock-and-roll pioneer Chuck Berry.