Keith Richards on the best rhythm guitarist in rock history: “One of the greatest in the world”
When looking at the greatest guitarists in the world, the emphasis on rhythm is often taken for granted. As much as people like the idea of getting to the point of shredding their way through every single song they can think of, it takes a master to lay into a groove and be able to lock in with a drummer in just the right way to give a song its pulse. Keith Richards might have a firm grasp on what good rhythm sounds like, but he learned all of it by listening to what Don Everly was doing in The Everly Brothers.
But the Everlys aren’t a group primarily known for their massive guitar chops or anything. Whenever someone brings them up, it usually comes down to their fantastic two-part harmonies working off of each other, whether that be them crying together on ‘Cathy’s Clown’ or singing sweetly on ‘All I Have To Do is Dream’.
If a group comprises just a duo, it’s easy to get the rhythm lost in the shuffle a little bit. Most people would just strum chords to fill out the sound, but since both Phil and Don were raised in the tradition of country music, many of their greatest moments came from that constant pulse of the low notes anchoring everything down.
In fact, that’s probably the reason why Richards’s country-leaning material with The Stones sounds so rustic as well. He had been used to playing different styles of rhythm guitar a la Chuck Berry, but outside of Gram Parsons’s influence in the songwriting department, some of the greatest sense of rhythm just came from Don Everly’s right hand.
The group’s history of using different ringing chords also helped to round out their sound. Anyone can play barre chords and make their way through a song alright, but if there are a lot of open strings in between everything, it makes the tune sound even larger than it normally sounds.
For Richards, that kind of taste is something that no one could truly teach, later recalling, “I realized that one of the best rhythm guitarists in the world ever is Don Everly, who always used open tuning. Don is the killer rhythm man. He was the one that turned me onto [windmill waves his right hand] – all of that.”
Throughout The Stones’ career, that open tuning would come in handy more than a few times for Richards. Despite settling on open-G as his go-to tuning of his instrument, some of the greatest moments came when those ringing chords were present throughout the recording of albums like Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed.
So, while The Everly Brothers are far from the most celebrated figures in rock and roll history, there’s a good chance that their influence shaped the entire guitar vocabulary. Without them, not only would Richards have sounded completely different, but so would John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and pretty much every kid who just had a few chords in their head to draw from.
