Keith Richards on the band who turned the world “from black and white to technicolour”
For anyone who came of age during the 1960s, it was no wonder that the main pined-after career route became rock and roll rapture, such did the crashing arrival of the genre onto the airwaves completely shake up both the musical scene at large but also captivate the hearts and minds of any young soul wrapped up in its orbit. Much as he may be a god in his own right now, Keith Richards was also one of those inspired spirits once upon a time whose adoration of music was rooted firmly in a specific direction.
As bands go, few can be as famous as The Rolling Stones, let alone with such a prolific in-house partnership as Richards and Mick Jagger. But despite being heroes to many in their own respective rights, they even had to bow down to hail the ‘King of Rock and Roll’ for being the first to guide the way.
Elvis Presley was, is, and forever will be the definitive rock star, for which the likes of The Rolling Stones will be eternally indebted. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that Richards wasn’t exactly inspired by the gyrating dance moves of the star – he was more interested in what was going on behind Presley and the band who ultimately played just as pivotal a role in carving out those early classic rock and roll standards.
Presley’s TCB Band take a lot of the illustrious credit, but his original lineup of The Blue Moon Boys were just as instrumental in propelling the King to his stratospheric status, particularly in his early days. In Richards’ view, when Presley and Co first started making their way into the scene, “He hit it like a bombshell. It was like the world went from black and white to technicolour.”
With that comparison making it clear in the guitarists’ eyes that they were the musical equivalent to the magic of The Wizard of Oz, it’s undeniably obvious that Richards worshipped the band as pioneers of the genre he himself would later go on to dominate. He continued: “I guess they were the first white band that anybody heard of with a good lead singer that was sailable. They had the rhythm. The beautiful thing about Elvis was that he sort of turned everybody into everybody (and made people think) ‘maybe you can do it’.”
To his mind, although Presley was the eminent entity within the band, from everyone else’s perspective, no man was any bigger than the other in creating their dynamite dynamic. Richards continued: “I was just as interested in the band as I was in Elvis. So I just considered him to be part of it, you know, Bill Black, Scotty Moore and DJ [Fontana]. Because of the early ones (Elvis albums) didn’t had drums on it, this is the funny thing – he is the King of Rock and Roll, and some of his earlier records don’t actually have drums,” proving that despite them being the biggest blazing stars of the genre, Presley’s band still left a lot of room for others to grow.
Ultimately, with The Rolling Stones having firmly been set on an other-worldly trajectory by the time of Presley’s death in 1977, the torch had been passed to a new era of rock and roll heroes in the form of Richards and Jagger. But it’s true that you never forget the first people you truly idolised – and in this case, it defined the course of the guitarist’s life more than most.
