Five bands Keith Richards thought were awful live acts: “Insulting to our audience”
Keith Richards needs the stage like Dracula needs the darkness. Apparently, the fanged Count is a huge fan of Justin Hawkins, but Richards probably isn’t quite so keen. In fact, The Rolling Stones guitarist isn’t that keen on many artists. He has given his life to his band. He admits that he is their leader. And he is fiercely protective of his providence, bashing The Beatles, Prince and anyone in between if he has to.
The crux of the group is the live experience. As Richards simply put it in his memoir: “There’s something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together. This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It’s really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it’s all for one purpose, and there’s no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it’s all up to you. It’s really jazz__that’s the big secret. Rock and roll ain’t nothing but jazz with a hard backbeat.”
Having performed over 2000 times, and his hunger to hit the road still ravenous even now he’s into his 80s, that camaraderie is something he can’t live without. It also defines the sound of the band. The Rolling Stones are nothing if not energy and atmosphere. As Roger Daltrey put it: “As a band, if you were outside a pub and you heard that music coming out of a pub some nights, you’d think, ‘Well, that’s a mediocre pub band’. No disrespect.” Before going on to clarify that this slack simplified rock ‘n’ roll is part of their charm and that they’re engineered for a live show carried by Mick Jagger.
Some bands might have greater chops, Richards himself would admit that, but he’d also make it clear that even virtuosos can be found lacking when it comes to occupying the spotlight. Below, we have curated his takes where he questions the credentials of great bands when it comes to the crunch—these are the groups Richards believes are shoddy live performers.
Five artists Keith Richards thinks are bad live:
The Beatles
He says The Beatles are “obviously” one of the best bands of all time, and yet he has also called some of their work a “load of shit”. Given that rivalry also still colours the comments a touch green, you can take much of his flippant appraisal with a pinch of salt and come to the conclusion that he is, indeed, a great admirer of the ‘Fab Four’.
However, there is one criticism that has resonated throughout the years and may hold more than a grain of salt. “Musically, The Beatles had a lovely sound and great songs,” he told the Radio Times. “But the live thing? They were never quite there.” Richards has played 2045 shows to date with The Rolling Stones alone, whereas The Beatles only played live 1471 times, with a whopping 391 of those coming in 1962. “They stopped touring in 1966 – they were done already. They were ready to go to India and shit.”
The Band
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.” 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.”
Prince
Prince bestrode the 1980s like a little colossus and changed the colour of the era with his expert musicianship to such an extent that The Stones desperately tried to beckon him out on the road with them, didn’t he ‘Keef’? “An overrated midget,” Richards dismissed. “Prince has to find out what it means to be a prince. That’s the trouble with conferring a title on yourself before you’ve proved it.”
Needless to say, while his bandmates Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger might have hailed him as a “genius”, Richards thought he failed to meet his audiences halfway when he went out on stage. He continued: “His attitude when he opened for us… was insulting to our audience. You don’t try to knock off the headline like that when you’re playing a Stones crowd. He’s a prince who thinks he’s a king already. Good luck to him.” Yeah, break a little leg, mate.
Jimi Hendrix
He’s the undisputed great, isn’t he? Well, in Keith’s eyes, even greatness can get carried away, and he figured his live shows were overcome by spectacle in the end. He had admired Jimi Hendrix when he first saw him jamming away in underground blues clubs, but then when he finally started releasing music, as “a guitar player“, Richards couldn’t help but feel “disappointed“.
“Although, given the time and that period, and given the fact that he was forced into an ‘English psychedelic bag’ and then had to live with it because that’s what made him — one of the reasons that he was so down at the period when he died was because he couldn’t find a way out of that,” the Rolling Stones man mused.
“Everybody got sort of carried on this tidal wave of success for doing outlandish things until what they were really known for was the outlandishness of what they were doing, and not really what they were doing. I mean, even with Satanic Majesties, I was never hot on psychedelic music.” He thought Hendrix’s live act was subsumed by this “outlandish“ upheaval and he ended up spending more time burning guitars than he did strumming them.
The Who
Pete Townshend might have said there are only two classic rock bands, The Rolling Stones and The Who. However, aside from their windmilling guitarist, Richards has often questioned the chops of the rest of the band. “I always thought Daltrey was all flash,” during a conversation with Rolling Stone in 2015.
He might like a few songs, and he figures they are not without their strengths live, he does think they’re all that jazz, quite literally. “I love Pete Townshend, but I always thought The Who were a crazy band anyway,” he continued. “You would say to Moon if you were in a session with him, ‘Just give me a swing,’ and he [couldn’t] … He was an incredible drummer, but only with Pete Townshend. He could play to Pete like nobody else in the world. But if somebody threw him into a session with somebody else, it was a disaster. There’s nothing wrong with that; sometimes you’ve got that one paintbrush, and you rock it.”
