"Five strings, three chords, two fingers, one asshole," was once Keith Richards's legendary summary of his own guitar playing philosophy. With the five strings, at least, he was reffering to his distinctive open G tuning, for wich he would remove the low bass string (or have Tony Zemaitis make him a special five-string guitar) while tuning the remaining strings D, B, G, D, G (high to low).
   For while the Rolling Stones have seen many landmarks since Come On hit the streets way back in 1963, nothing compares to the late '60s musical revolution as Richards' open-tuned chords had pickers everywhere frantically trying to decipher the mysterious droning sounds.
   Jumpin' Jack Flash led the charge - although that one was in open E (as was Gimme Shelter, the opener from 1969's Let It Bleed album), while other Stone's classics such as Honky Tonk Women, Tumblin' Dice and later Start Me Up, emerged in open G.
   Keith remembers the origins of the pioneering new sound that would take the Stones into a new direction:
  "I came across it on old blues records - in particular on the slide playing that Ry Cooder turned me onto around 1966. At the time I was a bit disenchanted with my own playing in standard tuning and, after playing around with these slide tuning in E and D as well as G, I realised that you could use them for rhythm guitar as well.
It was like learning guitar all over again. It gave me a new challenge. It was like, where do you put your fingers? And how do you change the chord to make it minor?"

   For his famous five-string open G tuning, Keith Richards uses a number of butter-scotch Fender Telecasters with maple necks and black pickguards, dating from 1952 to 1954, each with its own name (Malcolm, Micawber, Gloria, and so on). His Stratocaster collection features a '58 with an ash body, maple neck, and "Mary Kaye" finish (blonde body, gold hardware), and an early Sixties model with alder body and rosewood neck; according to Keith, the former sounds like Buddy Holly, the later like Curtis Mayfield. Other favorite electrics include a '57 Les Paul Junior with one P-90 and a '59 ES 175. Among his acoustics are several Martins - a 1930 000-45 (issued principally for fingerpicking), a '31 OM-28, a Forties D-18, and a '62 00-21 - plus a couple of Gibson  J-45s and  a Collings that's similar to a Martin OM.
  Although Keith has been known to use D'Addarios, his strings are  normally Emie Ball: .011-gauge for the six-strings, custom gauges for the five-strings, 80/20s for fundamental acoustic tracks, and Oskar Browns if he wants a brighter acoustic sound.
   Generally he eschews stompboxes, preffering to go straight into the amp, but he does own a Vox wah-wah.