The artist Keith Richards called the Alfred Hitchcock of classic rock
In the early years of the 1970s, there were three grade-A stadium sellers all vying for the mantle of the biggest rock group on the planet. Led Zeppelin was a certified classic rock behemoth across six worshipped LPs until finally starting to creatively sputter on 1976’s Presence. Starting the decade in their golden album run, no other band was as deeply shrouded in countercultural mythos as The Rolling Stones, however.
Having artistically reawakened during roots rock’s pull of the 1960s away from the ‘Summer of Love’s psychedelia, guitarist Keith Richards found himself in his Americana element, dreaming up immortal riffs all channelled from the old blues and country artforms that paved the way for rock and roll decades before.
As we all know, the Stones would see out the 1970s as well as every other subsequent decade to this day, celebrating their 60th anniversary in 2022 with a highly lucrative world tour. Through Its Only Rock ‘n Roll‘s creative doldrums, Tattoo You‘s MTV-ready last hurrah, and the ensuing run of perfunctory records to promote their live operations ever since, the Stones machine has ground away to stand as the world’s premier big-name headliner.
And soldier through they did. Through the thick and thin of inter-band turmoil and relationship fracture, the souring partnership between Richards and Stones frontman Mick Jagger reached such a nadir that the band wavered on disbandment.
Accelerated by Jagger’s solo pop fancy with 1985’s She’s the Boss, the doubt that was cast over the Stones’ future compelled Richards to cut a solo record of his own finally. Released in 1988, Talk Is Cheap would stand as the first of three solo LPs finally indulged after years slogging away in his day job band.
Speaking to SPIN three years prior, Richards was broached on the topic of a prospective album and in his musings named-checked the other of 1970s rock’s heavyweight third deity. “… (Pete) Townshend made better Who records than The Who did together. He used to go there with the album already finished, and the rest would come up with some dubs, but his was ten times better than the finished record. It was just a matter of them imitating what Peter had already laid out. Kinda ‘Hitchcockish’. After doin’ the storyboards, makin’ the actual movie was a drag for Hitchcock. His role thing was puttin’ it all together”.
It’s an intriguingly apt observation of Townshend’s role in The Who. Beyond just a guitarist, Townshend served as principal songwriter and grand-weaver of his incredibly ambitious conceptual rock operas that shaped Tommy, Quadrophenia, and the aborted Lifehouse multi-media project. Crafting taut and punchy garage power pop back when they were swinging mods, their performance at 1969’s iconic Woodstock Festival heralded a shift in Townshend’s visionary scope in conjunction with frontman Roger Daltrey’s renewed on-stage charisma.
Lost in the studio, be it conceiving a new narrative epic or immersed in the electronic innovations of his beloved ARP 2500, Townshend’s “Hitchcockian” perception are entirely fair and founded, Richards observing a creative director of the band that the Stones or anyone else in arena rock during the heady 1970s never quite possessed in their helm the same way.
