Why Keith Richards hates heavy metal music: “It sounds like a dull thud”
The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards knows what he likes and is a man of routine. For example, before every show, Richards can’t take to the stage unless he’s had his pre-show shepherd’s pie to nourish his appetite.
Despite being in a different city, Richards has no interest in varying his diet while on the road. Instead of indulging in tapas when performing in Madrid or a bowl of carbonara in Milan, the guitarist religiously sticks to the home comforts that remind him of his quintessentially Englishp childhood. “It’s now famous, my rule on the road. Nobody touches the shepherd’s Pie till I’ve been in there. Don’t bust my crust, baby,” Richards shared in his biography, Life.
Similarly, Richards’ attitude towards music mirrors his approach to food. If it wasn’t part of his early upbringing, he’s not interested in incorporating it into his life at this later stage. The guitarist has made it this far without expanding his musical palette, and it has served him well.
Famously, Richards continuously aired his feelings about the things in life that he loved and loathed. The Rolling Stones’ human riff-machine has never shied away from verbal sparring matches, even attacking his own bandmates on the odd occasion.
Richards’ record collection largely consists of the blues, along with a healthy dosage of reggae, jazz, and soul. In truth, he couldn’t care less about most other genres and has never even given some areas of music a fair crack of the whip. With that in mind, it should come as little surprise that he struggled to get to grips with heavy metal.
Instead, he grew up idolising Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters, whose brand of the blues starkly contrasts modern heavy metal. The genre didn’t exist when The Rolling Stones burst onto the scene, and it wasn’t until the birth of Black Sabbath in 1970 that it began to emerge as an entity.
Richards’ disdain for heavy metal has never been well-concealed. Even when the genre was in its infancy, decades before specialist festivals like Download began, Richards was unhappy with the heavy direction that Led Zeppelin had taken rock. “The guy’s voice started to get on my nerves. I don’t know why; maybe he’s a little too acrobatic,” he told Rolling Stone about Led Zeppelin back in 1969, and his opinion has not changed since.
In 2015, he reiterated his harsh stance on Led Zeppelin, stating: “I love Jimmy Page, but as a band, no, with John Bonham thundering down the highway in an uncontrolled 18-wheeler. He had cornered the market there. Jimmy is a brilliant player. But I always felt there was something a little hollow about it, you know?”.
Led Zeppelin are more of a hard rock outfit than a traditional heavy metal, and Richards’ perspective on the genre as a whole is even more scathing. “It sounds like a dull thud to me,” he told the New York Daily News in 2015. “For most bands, getting the syncopation is beyond them. It’s endless thudding away, with no bounce, no lift, no syncopation.”
Richards then lined up his most ferocious blow when he singled out the two biggest titans of the scene, stating, “Millions are in love with Metallica and Black Sabbath. I just thought they were great jokes.”
Keith Richards’ definition of heavy metal
In 2010, Richards then provided an alternative definition to heavy metal and implored music fans to listen to his advice, remarking, “If you want heavy metal, listen to John Lee Hooker, listen to that motherfucker play. That’s heavy metal. That’s armour.”
The statement listed above epitomises Richards’ outlook on music. The guitarist has been obsessed with the rhythm and blues to such an intoxicating degree that he can’t understand why anyone would rather listen to Black Sabbath when John Lee Hooker exists. By the same precedent, Richards also can’t comprehend why somebody would eat a burger when shepherd’s pie exists.
In his unwavering eyes, music is objective rather than subjective, and because metal didn’t exist when he was at a formative age, he’s never connected with the genre. For Richards, music is about emotions, and the role of songs is to nourish his soul, whether this be the sweet voice of Aretha Franklin or Chuck Berry’s slick guitar playing. On the contrary, bands like Metallica and Black Sabbath represent the antithesis of everything he wants from music.
