“Had nothing to say”: The rock albums Keith Richards refused to listen to
It’s impossible for artists to keep up with everything that comes out in the wild. The whole process of touring and recording can take it out of anyone when they’re trying to make ends meet, so there’s hardly any reason to think that they will be listening to every single upstart when they’re a part of their own travelling circus. And despite Keith Richards having his fair share of favourites that he always returns to, there are some albums that he couldn’t be paid to listen to.
Then again, there’s a good chance that a handful of Stones records are not too heavy rotation on Richards’s turntable. He has made it no secret that he has a particular sweet spot for when he loved working with the band, and while he does continue to pump out as many great riffs as he can, there are certainly moments that he would choose to forget during the 1980s when things were beginning to get a bit too tacky.
Nevertheless, even for the embarrassing fashions the band may have been rocking in their later years, it never took them long to find their feet again. Dirty Work was a pretty rough to listen to for anyone who wasn’t a fan of glitzy 1980s production, but albums like Voodoo Lounge did help remind everyone why the band was considered seductive and dangerous back in their prime.
If you look at the changing dynamics in the group, though, it always comes down to the tension between Richards and Mick Jagger. Both of them couldn’t have reached the massive heights they have without each other, but if ‘Keef’ had his way, he would have been content to play the same kind of bluesy rock and roll and the occasional country song for the rest of his life and be completely satisfied.
That doesn’t always equate to having hits, though, and Jagger was the one keeping his ear close to the ground at every opportunity. Sometimes that made for interesting bits on records like ‘Miss You’, but if Richards wasn’t on board when the band decided to dip their toes into disco music, he was far from impressed when Jagger struck out on his own to keep up with the trends going on in music.
Despite the former having some solo records of his own under his belt, he felt that there was no need to entertain what Jagger was doing outside of The Stones, saying, “I only did my records because [Mick] wasn’t working with us. [His solo work] had something to do with ego. He really had nothing to say. What did he have, two albums? I [never heard them], I’ll leave it at that. For me, I never thought of making records as a way of being famous or making a statement.”
That said, Richards does have a good reason to be upset. A lot of what Jagger had been coming up with could have easily fit onto a Stones project, so the idea of him making music on his own to be trendy made him look like he was leaving his bandmates out to dry for no good reason.
It may have been a risky creative move at the time, but given some of the regrettable actions Jagger made in his solo career, it might have been for the best that Richards kept his distance. After all, would you have liked to see one of the greatest guitarists in rock history join his band’s frontman and David Bowie prancing around to ‘Dancing in the Street’?
