Bobby Keys passed ten years ago today at the age of 70. Every fan of rock and roll knows Bobby’s work. And only Bobby could keep up with Keith during the height of the Stones most wasted years.
The killer sax on Brown Sugar: Bobby. The wailing sax on Can’t You Hear Me Knocking: Bobby. The tasty sax on Joe Cocker’s The Letter: Bobby. The soulful sax on John Lennon’s Whatever Gets You Thru the Night: Bobby. The tasty sax on Skynyrd’s Call Me the Breeze: Bobby.
Bobby was the Stones touring sax player, and Keith’s partier-in-crime (they even shared the same birth date), from 1970 to 1973. But in the middle of the Stones’ ‘73 tour, Mick fired him. Know why? Mick found out Bobby had filled a hotel bathtub with…Dom Perignon champagne. Cost the band more than Bobby’s entire salary for the tour could cover. To Bobby’s credit, Bobby drank most of it; not all that surprising as he and Keith consumed prodigious amounts of all kinds of substances. As Jim Keltner said, “He was funny and smart and always bordering on being in horrible trouble.”
How appropriate that Bobby’s memoir was titled “Every Night’s a Saturday Night.” Bobby would come back into the Stones fold to tour with them from 1981 until his death in 2014. He probably would have earned an official place in the band if he hadn’t been American. The Stones have never allowed a permanent member to be anyone but a Brit. (That might make an interesting trivia question: What does every member of the Stones, past and present, have in common?)
Another one of one rock legend.
