The 1975 song Keith Richards didn’t need to play live: “I’m not particularly interested”
Keith Richards didn’t get into the music industry trying to be one of the greatest guitarists in the world.
There are many times when he felt like he could have spent his days emulating his heroes from the blues world, but at a certain point, people are going to want to hear what else is in your arsenal than the typical licks that everyone picks up the first time they hear Muddy Waters. There had to be another outlet, but Richards felt that some of his songs went beyond anything that he could have done.
Because when you’re working with a band like The Stones, some of the best moments come from when everyone is riffing in the studio. The main section of ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’ is great as it moves towards the end, but the fact that they could come up with that kind of stuff on the spot and still be fantastic is what every musician is striving for. Not every jam is going to end with a masterpiece, but Richards felt that it sometimes just needs to be the right time in the studio to get everything sounding right.
And that didn’t even apply to the blues jams, either. Sure, half of Exile on Main St is indebted to some of the best tunes that they heard when they were kids, but aside from the traditional blues songs, there were also a lot more interesting tunes to be found once they started dipping into country music. Richards had already fallen in love with Gram Parsons’s music, so the next best thing was to try his hand at his own classics.
‘Wild Horses’ was already a masterpiece before the band even reached their magnum opus, but even well into the 1970s, Black and Blue saw them continuing to push themselves whenever they performed. ‘Rip This Joint’ was what a lot of the fans wanted to hear, but Richards also remembered that a song like ‘Melody’ could hit just as hard even if they weren’t going a million miles an hour whenever they performed.
It was all about trying to create a mood with the song, and even when strumming away on their guitars, The Stones created the kind of ballad that could stand alongside the best country tunes that they made. ‘Far Away Eyes’ wasn’t too far behind this kind of tune, but Richards felt that ‘Melody’ deserved a certain spot in their catalogue as a song that no one needed to mess with when they left the studio.
The tune was fantastic on its own, and even right after they recorded it, Richards felt that there was no reason for them to try and reproduce it live, saying, “‘Melody’ was a bit tongue in cheek for me really. It’s hard to play live and take it any further. All we could do is make a reasonable copy of the record onstage which I’m not particularly interested in doing.” But even if all of The Stones’ country songs have a sly wink and nod to country, they were still genuinely great at what they did.
Even if Mick Jagger wasn’t the right person to add the kind of twang to his voice that everyone heard, no one would have cared if he tried to make a sequel to ‘Satisfaction’. If anything, country was their second strongsuit, and even if the band themselves weren’t completely sold on it, it’s a lot better than hearing Jagger try and fail to sound seductive when trying to make tunes like ‘Miss You’ later down the line.
But whereas most people won’t perform some songs live because they’re too hard, ‘Melody’ is more of a case where the vibe can’t really be captured again. Some of the best Rolling Stones songs tend to feel like a moment in time, and even if they are happy to give fans that moment over and over again when they perform live, there’s no point in messing with perfection the first time around.
