First I saw this story: Keith Richards is now ‘jamming with Jehovah’ !

London: His near-death experience has apparently made Rolling Stone guitarist Keith Richards think about his after life, for he´s just cut an album of religious songs.

The guitarist, more famous for Stones songs such as ‘Sympathy For The Devil´ and the album ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request´, cut a CD called ‘My Soul Is A Witness´ of African-American spiritual music with his sister-in-law, concert singer Marsha Hansen.

A source said that Richards´ turn to religion is making him the butt of jokes among some of his pals back home in the UK.

“Some of Keith´s friends back in Britain have been poking fun, saying he´s now jamming with Jehovah,’ The Sun quoted the source, as saying.

So, that would certainly lead you to believe that it was his recent brush with mortality (some would say that Keith’s whole life is a brush with mortality) after falling out of a tree in Fiji that led directly to this recording of gospel material. And that people are making fun of him for it — naturally.

Researching just a little deeper, I found this more detailed story: Rolling Stone guitarist plays on religious CD.

He may have Sympathy for the Devil, but Keith Richards also jams for Jehovah.

The 62-year-old Rolling Stone is a guest guitarist on My Soul Is a Witness — a collection of spirituals released without fanfare last month.

The book and compact-disc project is the brainchild of Richards’ sister-in-law, concert vocalist Marsha Hansen.

About half the music was recorded at the guitarist’s Connecticut home in 2001.

Richards plays on a halfdozen tracks, including I Want Jesus to Walk With Me and Rock in Jerusalem. Also performing on the album is former Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin and Bob Dylan drummer George Receli.

The CD might be hard to find. Augsburg Books, affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, initially made only 2,500 copies. A second run is on the way.

So, it turns out that the album has been out for a little while already, and, more to the point, Richards was working on it back in 2001 — sometime before his Fijian head injury. Nevertheless, the same “jams for Jehovah” gag is repeated.

Why do I find all this interesting? I guess it’s just the way the story got distorted and twisted for the first article (one which is popping up in multiple outlets today), and in particular the way it is just presumed to be funny.

I have no idea what Keith Richards thinks about God, and I’m not intensely curious about it. It’s pretty clear, though, the reaction he would get were he ever actually to confess to believing in something as “funny” as the idea that Jesus Christ could be his savior. His mere strumming of some guitar in 2001 on an album of gospel songs leads to him becoming “the butt of jokes,” in the words of the first story. What if he actually stood up and said he believed what was in those songs?

This is just a passing story, and of little import, and I’m sure Keith Richards is bothered not one little bit by it, but it’s a measure of what the definition of “ridiculous” is in much of the media, and, in the context of this web site, it’s also a reminder of the kind of stuff that Bob Dylan was bringing down upon his head in 1979, when he went on Saturday Night Live and sang I Believe In You.

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If your computer and browser are appropriately equipped, you can view a clip of that performance by clicking below.

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