The 1970s band Mick Jagger and Keith Richards can’t agree on: “Never took off”
The heart of The Rolling Stones always comes back to that love/hate relationship between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
They will forever be known as two legends of rock and roll, but when you’ve been around someone for that long, you tend to fight in the same way that brothers fight when they aren’t clicking properly. But even if ‘The Glimmer Twins’ did have more than a few spats during their career, they could usually put away all of the pettiness for the sake of playing a kickass rock and roll tune.
But half of the problems that they had usually came down to deciding what direction they should go in. Jagger was always the one looking to cash in on trends whenever they made a new record, and you can definitely hear when he’s having a bit too much of an influence on the band when you look at his performances during the 1980s. As for Keef, though, it didn’t take much to impress him as long as the song had the right kind of bluesy swagger to it. So in theory, Led Zeppelin should have been what the guitarist always wanted.
Think about it: here’s a band that is steeped in the blues tradition, is extremely reverent of the power of rock and roll, and even manages to have the same bluesy jams that The Stones were doing around that time. Throw in a bunch of acoustic-tinged country tunes, and Richards would have easily fit in perfectly with Zeppelin, so why the hell was he the one who didn’t seem to get it whenever he heard them?
Richards could be diplomatic when it came to complimenting Jimmy Page, but he felt that whatever magic that everyone saw in Zeppelin was lost on him, saying, “As a band, I feel like they were aptly named. It never took off musically. At the same time, Jimmy is one of the best guitarists I’ve ever known and Bonham is a hell of a powerhouse, though I thought he was a bit heavyhanded. That’s where the ‘LED’ comes from. To me, if you want to cut the story short, Led Zeppelin is just Jimmy Page.”
Which is insane to think about a band that practically started an entire new subgenre of rock and roll. The Stones were among the heaviest bands in the world when they started, but Bonham made Charlie Watts look like he wasn’t even trying when he played, almost sounding like he was trying to decimate his kit while at the same time having the greatest pocket playing that anyone had ever heard.
And even if Richards felt that Robert Plant copied his frontman to a certain degree, Jagger took that as one hell of a compliment, saying, “I used to go and watch them live. And I remember watching their concerts live in New York and everything. I mean, it was a great thunderous wonderful racket, brilliant. (Also) I saw their last concerts as well and they were absolutely incredible.” But that’s normally the best way that Jagger could appreciate some of his favourite artists.
The rule behind any great rock and roll band is being able to kill onstage, and Jagger felt that what Zeppelin did was well above everyone else. He could still run around the stage and make sure that the audience was absolutely delirious at the end of the night, but it’s almost not fair seeing Zeppelin do everything right, from Page’s sonic wizardry to Bonzo playing drums with his hands to Plant looking like some musical sprite that has come to dazzle everyone with his screams.
Both Jagger and Richards may have been looking at the band from two completely different angles, but the fact that Zeppelin even managed to get their attention was saying something. Richards didn’t have very nice things to say about them, but that might have been because he was jealous that there was a new hard rock band in town showing everyone how it was done.
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