Netflix doc explores Keith Richards' influences

For a self-avowed music nerd like Morgan Neville, days don't get  much better than the one he spent spinning records with Keith Richards.

Neville directed Keith Richards: Under the Influence, an original Netflix documentary that premieres Friday, the same day the Rolling Stones guitarist releases his Crosseyed Heart album. On the first day of shooting, Neville says, "I brought about a hundred albums and a turntable, and we just talked about music for a couple hours. It was fantastic."

That day set the stage for Under the Influence, which tells Richards' story through the music he loves. "It was never supposed to be a documentary," says Neville, who began filming shortly before the Rolling Stones' summer North American tour. Initially, he says, he thought the footage might be used for an electronic press kit. "In the back of our minds, we thought, 'We'd love to make a Keith Richards documentary.' But I think if we had gone in saying that, it never would have happened. It could only have happened in the backwards way it did happen."

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Richards says he had little input into the film, beyond providing Neville with previously unseen home movies. "They worked around me so subtly that I was hardly aware I was making a documentary," he says. "Literally, I was on the road with the Stones, so I had other priorities. Morgan has a way of doing things where he'd just pop in."

Neville won a best-documentary Oscar for 20 Feet From Stardom, his film about backup singers. He also co-produced a 2012 documentary about the Stones called Crossfire Hurricane.

Because he didn't expect to make a documentary this time, he didn't spend as much time researching his subject as he usually does, a difference that give Under the Influence an almost improvisational feel.

"There's a kind of Keith energy and looseness that the whole process of making the film had to match," he says. "For me, as a filmmaker, it was liberating, because there was no time to overthink it.

"In a weird way, the entire making of the film has been done on Keith's wavelength — for the better, I think. I'm still kind of stunned how well this film turned out. Now I say, 'Why should I ever spend more than six months making a documentary?'"

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Neville's favorite moment of the film came after he received early partial mixes, called "stems," of the Stones' 1968 hit Street Fighting Man. "It was kind of a demo that got upgraded into a feature version," he says. "Keith used this old Norelco tape recorder to overdrive the acoustic guitar and make it sound like an electric guitar.

"We brought one of those exact same tape recorders to Keith. We listened to the stems, then Keith re-enacted what he did. It was pretty amazing."

For Richards, Crosseyed Heart has the added benefit of spotlighting some of his heroes, including Buddy Guy, who's featured in a key scene.

When the Stones first started, Richards says, "Our biggest ambition was to be the best blues band in London. That was it. And to find out, to have Buddy Guy thank the Stones for resurrecting the blues in America — hey, I've done the job in spades, man. All I wanted to do was turn other people on to them."