The classic rock band Keith Richards just couldn’t understand: “Too strict”
The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is so uncomplimentary that he’s allegedly never once uttered the words, ‘You look nice’, not even on his wedding day. For the rocker, a level of affrontery is par for the course. Where would rock ‘n’ roll be without it, he might wonder.
So, from The Beatles to The Bee Gees, the high seas pirate of the blues has happily taken a swipe at other people’s heroes. In the process, he adds to the vagabond lore of his own band. But that doesn’t mean his critical takes are all for effect—this is especially true when they get more analytical than a quick offensive quip.
However, even his sincere analysis is often fiercely contrarian. The Band might be renowned for their ability to jam with anyone, heeding their whims and bringing the best out of them. After all, that is literally how they came about—touring endlessly with different artists in different genres before deciding to go it alone. But Richards argued that even their jamming ability was a learned, reactionary sort rather than the genuine, flowing fluidity he aimed for.
“I saw them at the Dylan gig on the Isle of Wight, and I was disappointed,” Richards told Rolling Stone. “Dylan was beautiful, especially when he did the songs by himself. He has a unique rhythm which only seems to come off when he’s performing solo.”
This barely comes as a surprise, Richards has always been effusive when it comes to Dylan, describing him as the star who truly changed songwriting in the 1960s, even if he also once called him a “nasty bugger” too. For many, as the decade came to a close, The Band were also approaching this unimpeachable status given the supportive way that they had backed the decade before breaking free with their own masterpieces, not for Richards.
The rocker added: “The Band were just too strict. They’ve been playing together for a long, long time, and what I couldn’t understand was their lack of spontaneity.” Perhaps that’s because most of the time, they were playing to someone else’s lead, so they served the song rather than the moment. But it is a strange criticism all the same, as anyone who has seen the utterly visceral Last Waltz will attest.
Moreover, a sense of strictness has often been a barb levelled at The Rolling Stones themselves. Paul McCartney famously called them ”a blues cover band”, and Roger Daltrey argued, ”As a band, if you were outside a pub and you heard that music coming out of a pub some night, you’d think, ‘Well, that’s a mediocre pub band!’”
Their takes on the Stones imply that any spontaneity from the blues rockers comes from an innate sloppiness, but the flip side is that that is all part of their joy. In other words, The Rolling Stones are the only band that has never hit a bad bum note. They play off feel and energy, trying their best to deliver something vital—something true to the original, liberating spirit of rock ‘n’ roll that first moved them.
However, this doesn’t mean that they escape a sense of strictness themselves. In fact, this bore out on one of the occasions when they actually played live with Dylan in France, and the improvising folk star mixed things up on a whim. This caused the Stones to miss their cue, so rather than react, they looped back through the entire section, prompting Dylan to walk off stage and flip Richards the bird. So, I suppose you could argue in retort, if anything, that it takes a strict band to know one.
