The artist that Mick Jagger didn’t understand: “Never really clicked”
Sometimes, being in a great rock and roll band all comes down to chemistry. Just because a label puts two rock legends in the same room together doesn’t necessarily mean they’re going to walk out with God’s gift to music, and there are more than a few times when the musical gelling just never comes together. And as much as Mick Jagger could claim to have brought rock and roll to the masses, Keith Richards remembered that there was never a spark of creativity when working with Gram Parsons.
But Parsons was never meant to be on the same level as The Rolling Stones when he first came into their world. As far as everyone was concerned, the California rocker was the one who would bring country music to the mainstream, while The Stones were more than happy to make the occasional country tune when not playing Richards’s incredible licks.
Then again, it’s not like Parsons didn’t know his way around a hook. His work with The Byrds had helped them embrace the sounds of the Southern US, and his work with The Flying Burrito Brothers was bound to get people talking, especially when he started breaking onto the scene alongside other country rock legends like Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris.
The Stones may have been across the pond, but Richards saw more than another rock star. For him, this was a musical comrade that he could bounce ideas off of, and since the British legends were already leaning towards rootsy stuff on songs like ‘Dead Flowers,’ it wasn’t out of the question for them to pick up a thing or two from what Parsons was playing.
Although Richards loved working with Parsons in between takes during Exile on Main St, he admitted that Jagger never got it, telling Rolling Stone, “Mick and Gram never really clicked, mainly because The Stones are such a tribal thing. At the same time, Mick was listening to what Gram was doing. Mick’s got ears. Sometimes, while we were making Exile on Main Street in France, the three of us would be plonking away on Hank Williams songs while waiting for the rest of the band to arrive.”
Even Jagger would probably agree with Richards half the time. When talking about playing up their country material, the frontman said that while he liked the sound of the songs, he could never take them that seriously, which is probably evident to anyone who has listened to ‘Dear Doctor’ and heard him try to put on this southern belle accent in the back half of the tune.
Granted, there might have also been times when Jagger might have been slightly jealous of what Parsons was working on. Since Jagger and Richards were the two-headed monsters, who wrote songs for The Stones, suddenly seeing his partner working with this new up-and-comer was bound to wear on him a little.
Despite the handful of tense moments, there was never any reason for Jagger to worry about Parsons replacing him. Exile On Main St was always going to come out like a Stones record, and as long as he was able to roll with the punches, there was no reason why Jagger couldn’t go from singing down-and-out country on one day and then tear the place to shreds the next.
