“There are more”: Keith Richards on the seminal geniuses of rock and roll
The entire concept of rock and roll becoming popular almost feels like the most beautiful mistake in music history. Although most people were inundated with everything from blues to jazz to pop, all of it coalesced with a bit more attitude to become an entirely different genre of music once the 1950s kicked in. However, for all the people who claimed to invent the genre in their time, Keith Richards was one of the few who could claim to have been there from the very beginning.
Then again, Richards was far more interested in doing blues when he was starting out with The Rolling Stones. Some of their songs were straight-up rock and roll, but he would have considered it the highest honour if he had been asked to play with anyone from BB King to Muddy Waters to Buddy Guy, if he had the chance to.
But the true genesis of all the Stones’ music began when people like Chuck Berry and Little Richard started making their own tunes in America. Each of them had cut their teeth playing blues music, but by adding some of the greatest backbeats of all time into the mix, they had created the kind of frantic energy that would become synonymous with the genre going forward. In fact, both of them seemed like mirror images of each other, with Berry becoming the prolific songwriter who could play the guitar like second nature and Richard being the architect of rock and roll singing.
That was a good place to start, but it also helped that people like Fats Domino brought the blues back into the equation. There was always that rock and roll edge when he started singing tunes like ‘Ain’t That A Shame’, but the core piece of his sound was always in the swing that he brought across whenever he played, pushing and pulling much in the same way Richards would do with his rhythm guitar later.
And as the movement started finding its feet a little bit, Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly took the entire scene to new heights. Cochran was the Elvis Presley that never was with his leather jacket and suave demeanour, but Buddy Holly is one of the most central figures for the British rock scene, eventually encouraging every band to write songs on their own rather than covering other people’s material.
Out of all the founders of rock and roll, though, it’s those five that Richards considered the true pioneers of the genre he couldn’t get enough of, telling Howard Stern, “Who are the geniuses? It’s pretty easy to spot them. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly. That’s five for a start. There are a couple more, but they are the seminal [ones].”
While there are traces of all of those bands in the way that Richards operates, there are subtle pieces of his sound that manage to transcend even what they were doing. At the same time, the Stones could play as loud as they wanted, but they would never be able to match the kind of fury that Little Richard brought to his music or that kind of swing that came when Fats Domino sat behind the keys.
The most important lesson that can come from rock and roll is to be yourself whenever you pick up an instrument. You may have to fail miserably trying to emulate your heroes, but eventually, there will come a moment when those failed attempts actually start sounding original.
