“He’d have killed us all”: The guitarist Keith Richards said no one could compete with
Art was not built for people to use their pieces as competition. It’s all about the expression of whatever someone feels in their heart, and it’s hard to think that music is coming from a genuine place when all it’s trying to do is get one over on the competition. While Keith Richards did see the sportsmanship in being a guitar player, he admitted that one blues guitarist would have wiped the floor with every blues musician had he still been around.
Looking at how Richards played, his guitar technique is practically an encyclopedia of all things blues. While he has moulded himself into one of the more unique guitarists of the modern age because of open-G tuning, there are still bits and pieces of everyone from BB King to Muddy Waters in the way that he keeps the groove going and bounces off of Charlie Watts’s kick drum on those early records.
He wasn’t without his fair share of rock and roll heroes, either. When most people were focusing on what Sinatra was doing, Richards was paying close attention to every Chuck Berry lick he could wrap his fingers around, with half of his licks being descended from either the rock and roll godfather or from Elvis Presley’s guitarist, Scotty Moore.
Robert Johnson was a bit of a different breed compared to other guitarists, though. Years before the concept of rock and roll existed, Johnson was the epitome of what a dangerous rock guitarist was supposed to be, from having flings with multiple women to partying whenever he was offstage.
Although his partying ways eventually drove him to an early grave after someone poisoned him after a show, Richards was still paying attention. Whenever blues guitarists stumble onto tracks like ‘Crossroads’ or ‘Me and the Devil Blues’, they’re hearing not only a man expressing himself but also someone practically possessed by their own muse.
And if Johnson had been around to see his golden years, Richards genuinely didn’t think that there would be any sense of competition in rock, telling Guitar Player, “He’d have killed us all! If Johnson had just been a little nicer to his chicks and knew how to play the ladies a little better, then he might have been there instead of Muddy. I have the feeling he would have gone into a band thing. I’ve heard rumours that he did have a band before he died. I don’t know if that’s wishful thinking, but at the same time, I don’t discount it.”
While the only remnants that we have are various compilations of him that sound like they were recorded on the modern equivalent of voice memos, Johnson’s technique hasn’t been lost on anyone. Outside of The Stones covering his work, tunes about the dark side of life like ‘Wild Horses’ and ‘Gimme Shelter’ may not have existed had Johnson not been breaking down the door for what was allowed in blues music years before.
Then again, Johnson wasn’t trying to necessarily dominate the conversation of guitar when he started. His music was all about telling the story of his life, and by being that open and honest about himself, he taught every rocker the importance of saying what was on their mind rather than going along with the program.
