The female singer Keith Richards said could go toe-to-toe with Mick Jagger: “A run for his money”
Most rock stars get their performance chops by listening to The Rolling Stones. While their material might not be everyone’s cup of tea, what Keith Richards and Mick Jagger wrote together helped set the standard for what dangerous rock and roll sounded like in the 1960s and beyond. Although Keef was more than happy to bang out the riffs and tolerate Jagger on occasion, he admitted that this female singer made the frontman look like he needed to step up his game in concert.
Granted, it’s hard to say that Jagger isn’t doing as much as he can onstage. Compared to most performers his age, he seems to run a marathon every single time The Stones put on a show, which probably looks exhausting for someone in decent shape, let alone someone who could be someone’s great-grandfather.
Getting that way wasn’t exactly an accident, either. Ever since the 1980s, Jagger has made it a routine to be the wildest frontman onstage, usually involving a prep time of running miles before a Stones tour to ensure he doesn’t find himself limping his way through any of their setlists.
If you have ever had the pleasure of seeing The Rolling Stones perform, you will know that he rightly takes his position as the star of the show. But what is more impressive is that, if you were to steal the kind of heat map beloved by sports commentators, then you would see that Jagger’s has rarely decreased in size and always been white hot across the stage.
But rock and roll isn’t about making every show an endurance test. It’s about capturing a feeling every time someone picks up a guitar, and from the moment she started performing, Florence Welch turned every one of her shows into a spiritual event whenever she started songs like ‘Dog Days Are Over’.
While Welch isn’t trying to copy Jagger’s style in any way, her way of approaching the stage feels like a shamanistic experience half the time. Whereas Jagger seems to treat every single show as a job, everything coming off the stage during Florence and the Machine is being done because it needs to be pulled out of Welch’s soul half the time.
Since Richards always preferred working on the riffs and doing what comes naturally, he gravitated towards Welch’s style compared to what Jagger was doing when she joined them onstage, saying, “I’d never met her before or seen her work, but I just went, ‘Wow, there’s a strong voice.’ She’s a hell of a performer. She gave Mick a run for his money. She can move. Great fun, lovely girl.”
There is no doubt that Welch has the vocal stamina to match Jagger, the Stones man has rarely triumphed in a straight singing contest. But perhaps the wildest claim is that she could outperform the notoriously virile ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ singer. However, considering Welch once broke her foot completely he rown set of powerful dance moves, Richards might be right.
Listening to her duetting with Jagger on the song ‘Gimme Shelter’, though, it’s not hard to see why Jagger needed to give it his all. Merry Clayton’s original vocals are never going to be eclipsed by any singer, but when Welch took to the stage, you could feel the same raw pain in her vocals that the original track had, only this time without the raw vocal cracks that happened halfway through the tune.
While Jagger has a lot more road miles under his belt than Welch has, that shouldn’t mean that he has any type of superiority over her. Because even though Jagger can strut his way across the stage and hold the audience in the palm of his hand, he’s probably never going to hit on something as visceral as what Welsh could do during her shows.
