(Credits: Far Out / Tyler Clemmensen)
Sat 7 March 2026 22:30, UK
When you’re one of the most famous musicians in the world, where do you choose to live?
Perhaps you do the inevitable and move to Los Angeles to blend in with the rest of the stars in the land of the famous, or maybe you stay in your hometown in the hopes that familiarity might afford you some peace, or, if you’re a Rolling Stone like Keith Richards, the answer is to move to the middle of nowhere.
When life is as hectic and crazy as it must be for Richards, the time you spend at home must be a mission for peace. He has lived arguably one of the most insane lives imaginable, narrowly beating death several times and surviving one of music’s most intense drug addictions, all while writing hit after hit after hit as one of rock and roll’s most beloved and famous figures.
So when he’s not on the road, and now that wildlife has been mostly put to bed, Richards is looking for a calm life and a place to simply lie low and recuperate before hitting the stage again, thus landing in Connecticut of all places. In 1985, after the birth of his daughter Theodora, he moved there for a quieter life, thinking it a good place to raise the kids and come home to after busy periods.
Ever since, that’s where he’s called home, but clearly, another musical icon had the same idea, about which Esquire asked the Rolling Stones guitarist, “Do you know that José Feliciano lives in the same town as you in Connecticut?”
In the same small town of Weston, with a population of only 10,354 people in 2020, both Richards and the Puerto Rican artist have made their home, in the latter’s eyes, which makes him the second best guitarist in town, as he said, “He’s a far better guitar player than me”.
Willing to hand over the medal of the town’s finest musician to Feliciano, the Stones player said, “I ain’t trained that way. I force the thing to do as it’s told”, because Feliciano’s playing comes off the back of serious and classical training and a connection to his home country’s musical legacy and traditions.
But in a weird way, one being there must make it even nicer for the other. When Richards arrived in the 1980s, he surely must have stood out like a sore thumb in his rock and roll get-up, or even just with his British accent. As the loud new resident in a sleepy old-money town, I’d imagine there was a period of adaption for both Richards and the other residents.
So I wonder if knowing another rock and roller is just down the road makes it easier for them both, providing some kinship or brotherhood, even though Richards admitted back in 2015 that they’d actually never met.
Despite the small town, their paths had miraculously never crossed as he revealed, “We’ve never crossed paths, even though Weston is a very small town; there’s a gas station and a market”. Like ships in the night, the town’s two resident icons never seem to bump into each other, but maybe the day they do, musical history will be made.