Forty years later, sitting in a suite at New York’s Carlyle Hotel, the hardest-living man in show business suggests that time may have finally caught up with him. "I’m a really straight old man now," he growls-though the pirate’s leer from beneath his bandanna hints at a certain lack of sincerity.

Despite recently turning 64, and in 2006 undergoing brain surgery after falling from a tree in Fiji, he’s still enthusiastically swirling the ice in a cocktail he’s dubbed Nuclear Waste—a mix of vodka and Sunkist orange soda he started drinking because his stomach couldn’t take the Rebel Yell anymore—and working his way slowly through a pack of full-strength Marlboros. He remains bracingly frank about his romantic appeal ("the most beautiful women in the world are attracted to ugliness-as long as you’ve got a good tongue. Heh heh") and keen to endorse his favorite firearms ("a .38 Smith & Wesson Airweight revolver—that’s the fucking gun. No safety on it"). And his stage presence remains undiminished: In the new Martin Scorsese–directed Rolling Stones concert film, Shine a Light, the solo turn Richards takes on his ballad "You Got the Silver" is the highlight of the movie: "Bless yer ’eart, pal," he says when apprised of this by Blender. "I turned it into a piece of theater."

As for the drugs, he insists he’s always been more careful than you might think. "I never took anything without researching what it was," he says. Though he does add one thing: "I’ve got to admit—sometimes, I probably overdid it."