The musician Keith Richards called the “foundation” of The Rolling Stones
Today, The Rolling Stones are firmly on the upper echelon of rock and roll, having gained a reputation as one of the most famous and successful rock bands of all time over the course of their six-decade career. The Stones laid the foundations for a colossal part of the rock genre, but the band themselves were founded on very humble beginnings. In fact, part of their appeal during the early days of the 1960s was that The Rolling Stones were made up of fairly ordinary young men with a penchant for blues rock.
This image of the band as being adolescent rock and roll misfits was utterly essential to their early success. The youthful rebellion of The Rolling Stones offered something of an alternative to the fresh-faced pop stars, like The Beatles, dominating the singles charts of the 1960s. Even as the band grew older and infinitely more popular, they never particularly distanced themselves from that early image, and their time together has been storied by a variety of bizarre and mischievous antics.
Inevitably, though, a band composed entirely of anarchic rock rebels can only go so far. Attitude is an integral part of modern rock, but ultimately, you need the musical talent to back it up. Luckily, The Stones were able to get through the songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, although even that core duo needed somebody else to lean on. In those early years, this foundational figure came in the form of the group’s original leader, Brian Jones. As Jones became more and more outcasted from the band and his mental health took a turn for the worse, the guitarist could no longer be entrusted to be the glue that held The Stones together.
Multiple musicians have come and gone from the line-up of The Rolling Stones over the years, but according to Keith Richards, one figure has always been a little more important than the others. Richards has never been one to embrace modesty, but to his credit, he recognises the importance of members other than himself and Jagger. In fact, while speaking to GQ in 2008, he remarked that, without The Stones, Jagger would be “just another wannabe. And so would I”.
Instead, Richards chose to espouse the importance of his rhythm section. “There is an incredible chemistry with The Stones. I don’t want to analyse it,” he said before adding: “To me, Charlie Watts is the foundation of it all because that’s what I work off of, and we’ve been doing it all our lives.” As the drummer for The Rolling Stones from their early days in 1963 all the way up until his unfortunate death in 2021, Watts was responsible for providing the rhythm to countless now iconic rock and roll anthems.
The importance of drummers often goes unnoticed or underappreciated, particularly within the context of the rock boom of the 1960s. Essentially, though, a great rock band simply cannot exist if they have a bad drummer, and The Rolling Stones could not have achieved their intense level of acclaim without the impact of Watts.
Richards also highlighted an unexpected band member, sharing, “Rolling Stones founder Ian Stewart—I must give my man Ian, and I think Charlie would agree, on a good day—it’s Ian Stewart’s band. We’re just keeping it together for him. It was his vision.”
Richards added, “It all comes from purity, you know, which sounds really weird coming from me, right?”
Putting Stewart on a pedestal feels particularly strange for Richards. After all, the co-founder of the band was ousted from its official line-up by 1963 and remained only as road manager and occasional onstage keyboardist until his untimely death in 1985. The treatment of Stewart, as well as fellow founding member Brian Jones, remain some of the most shameful moments in The Stones’ history, although Richards clearly feels otherwise.
