“Playing into a vacuum”: The song Keith Richards called a musical time bomb
Keith Richards adopts versatility when it comes to choosing the music he wants to listen to. There are a number of genres that appeal to him, including blues, jazz, soul and rock ‘n’ roll. However, something which is unnegotiable for the Rolling Stones guitarist is that the music he listens to needs to be packed with energy, honesty and truth. Otherwise, he doesn’t see the point in either writing or listening to it.
He made this point by talking about his adoration for reggae, which can be applied to several other styles of music. “What I love about reggae is that it’s all so natural. There’s none of this forced stuff that I was getting tired of in rock music,” said Richards, “Rock ‘n’ roll I never get tired of, but ‘rock’ is a white man’s version, and they turn it into a march, that’s [the modern version of rock […] I prefer the roll.”
Heart and soul are one thing, but good artists must also be technically proficient. Richards knows this all too well, as while he and Jagger might have been writing from a natural place when they first started making music, original songs didn’t come to the Rolling Stones as easily as they would have liked. It took their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, locking them in a room together to eventually force them to finish an original track.
“When you start writing, it doesn’t matter where the first one comes from,” recalled Richards, “You’ve got to start somewhere, right? So Andrew locked Mick and myself into a kitchen in this horrible little apartment we had. He said, ‘You ain’t comin’ out’, and there was no way out.”
Those two important aspects of songwriting have followed Richards throughout his career and can be heard at the heart of Rolling Stones’ music. He knows the importance of technical proficiency and a natural ability that all musicians should possess on some level so that their music feels as though it comes from an organic place.
Richards is very proud of his catalogue. He also has some songs that he describes as “Timebombs.” These are tracks that he doesn’t believe will ever age, and while they may not currently be some of Rolling Stones’ most popular tracks, he thinks that with time, people will come to realise that they’re actually one of their best offerings.
One of these tracks he loved not just because of how it came out but who he had helping him with the song. As such a big fan of jazz music, Richards was aware of how much a good saxophonist could add to a song, and he had one of the best on this track.
“Bridges to Babylon is another album that has one of my time bombs tucked on the end: ‘How Can I Stop’, which I will let re-surface in due course. It’s got Wayne Shorter playing on it, for Christ’s sake. Some jazz musicians look upon what I do as ‘dudey’ music, and I’ll say to them, ‘That’s up to you, guys’, because I really hate jazz snobbery: ‘Excuse me, if you play music, you want people to listen to it, right? There’s no point playing into a vacuum’.”
