He has heard it all, including the post-apocalyptic prophecy that "it'll be me and the roaches left," Richards says with a hoarse laugh, shrugging off his reputation as a wrinkled dope survivor.
"I've become a cartoonish little icon. You've got to be proud of that. If you can't take the pot shots, you shouldn't be in show business."
Richards (67) gets the last laugh as one of the few in the business to hold the globe rapt for five decades.
The raggedly charming guitarist for the Rolling Stones has crafted indelible riffs, co-written some of rock's finest classics and influenced countless players with his primal, unpretentious style, often while on a rocky and reckless trail of drug habits, legal scrapes, toxic relationships and life-threatening mishaps. (A 2006 fall from a tree in Fiji required cranial neurosurgery.)
The unvarnished tale unfolded in his highly praised, best-selling memoir Life, but Richards' wildest days are behind him.
He gave up heroin in 1978 and cocaine after his head injury. He's been happily married to model Patti Hansen since 1983. He's more workaholic than alcoholic, drinking vodka sparingly these days and hustling moonlighting guitar gigs as he manoeuvres to reboot the Stones in time to mark next year's 50th anniversary.
That's a ticklish issue in light of Life's tough love for Mick Jagger. Richards dwells on the singer's philandering and dictatorial tendencies, calls him "unbearable" and even impugns his manhood.
When Jagger read Life before publication, "the blue pencil was flying", Richards says. "Of course, he had a few issues. I said, 'What am I going to do, lie? After all, Mick, the book ain't about you.'
"I told the story straight up. He did give me a hard time throughout life. Trying to bring the man down to earth took a while and took a toll on me. I have great respect for the man. I love him dearly, quirks and all."
When Jagger and Richards, boyhood pals since the early '50s, met in New York a month ago, "Mick pouted a bit, as is his wont," Richards says.
"I told him, 'It's water under the bridge. I want to talk about the future. We're larger than a little bitching here and there. It's only rock 'n' roll.' I love working with Mick. Maybe that friction that makes it work, that bit of sand in the oyster that makes the pearl."
The band is ploughing through masters of 1978's Some Girls in search of buried gems for a reissue similar to last year's Exile on Main Street. Jagger has a solo album in the works, and Richards has collaborated with Tom Waits and cut tracks with Steve Jordan, key member of his solo band X-Pensive Winos.
"There's a Wino-ish thing in the air," Richards says. "Not an intentional let's-put-the-Winos-together. I'm nurturing things as they go along."
But a monster milestone is looming, and Richards concedes, "Timing is everything".
The Stones played their first gig at London's Marquee Club on July 12, 1962. Richards' golden anniversary wish list: a 2012 studio album and world tour.
"Something's blowing in the wind," he says. "The idea's there, we kind of know we should do it, but nobody's put their finger on the moment yet. This is what we have to ask each other: do we want to go out in a blaze of glory? We can, if Mick and Charlie [Watts] feel like I do, that we can still turn people on. We don't have to prove nothing any more. I just love playing, and I miss the crowd."
Marking the band's 50th anniversary with a blowout tour "does indeed seem logical, even likely", says Ray Waddell, Billboard's senior editor of touring.
"If they do, and if they bill it as their last tour, which they've never done, it will without a doubt be an international blockbuster tour and a lock to be among the top tours of all time."
Besides the calendar crunch and after-Life discord, a pending lawsuit between longtime Stones promoter Michael Cohl and Live Nation presents another hurdle. Financial incentives may smooth the way.
U2's 360 Tour just surpassed the record $US558 million ($NZ677 million) set by the Stones' Bigger Bang Tour, and the Irish quartet is expected to gross $US700 million before 360 ends in July, according to Billboard Boxscore.
"If they were to pass U2 and reclaim the record gross, it would probably be driven by ticket prices as opposed to attendance, as the unprecedented capacities on 360, as well as the sheer number of shows, is what drove that band's historic numbers," Waddell says.
"If the Stones go out ... there is no reason they wouldn't command the highest ticket prices in history."
Can the Stones reclaim the touring crown?
"I don't know and I don't care," Richards sniffs. "So what?"
He finds Pirates star Johnny Depp more simpatico than U2's Bono. Richards joined Disney's franchise at the behest of Depp and plays the father of his character, Jack Sparrow, a wry, mumbling buccaneer largely inspired by the guitarist.
"I get to shoot somebody," Richards says. "It's fun and a change, a bizarre other world. If you're used to rock 'n' roll, books and movies are fairly tame."
The swashbuckling pair became drinking buddies off set, although Richards says he's not the guzzler he was.
As for that other stuff, he says his pharmaceutical consumption, while copious, was cautious.
"I don't recommend it for anybody else," he says, adding with a cackle, "I'm not human, after all. It's not something to emulate. It's my life."
Not simply an occupational hazard, drugs "helped you make the gig, especially if you're working 350 days a year," he says. "That's like being a seal. You can't be vegetarian and straight and play rock 'n' roll."
You can be monogamous, Richards discovered. He had three children with Anita Pallenberg and flings with Ronnie Spector and Marianne Faithfull (partly as payback to Jagger for bedding Pallenberg) before settling down with Hansen.
"If you're married to Patti Hansen, you don't want to switch," he says. "She's the most wonderful woman in the world. I love her more every day, and that's after almost 30 years of marriage. If anyone can keep me on the straight and narrow, she's the one."
Hansen survived bladder cancer, diagnosed in 2007, a scare that sent her usually unflappable husband into a tailspin.
"I didn't handle it that well," he says.
He was less taken aback when the couple's daughter Theodora (26) was arrested in March for scrawling on a Soho convent wall and possessing marijuana.
"She got popped for graffiti, and they found a little pot in her handbag," Dad says.
"That was a wake-up call for her. She went to the tank for the night, didn't pull any strings, didn't say, 'Do you know who my dad is?' She went to court, did her community service. I admire the way she handled it."