Keith Richards - 2008 - Musician - The Rolling Stones

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The one genre Keith Richards slammed for having no real musicians: “It was a matter of attitude”

Sat 11 April 2026 19:15, UK

For all of the great music Keith Richards has made with The Rolling Stones, he didn’t always mince his words about his craft.

He and Mick Jagger had created the band from the ground up when they began writing songs, and while that might have bothered Brian Jones in the beginning, it was worth it for them to play off each other and make the kind of songs that the kids wanted to hear. But even if they have achieved immortality at this point, Richards had his ears open for when music started changing before his eyes as well.

Because, really, all rock and roll needed to go through some evolution if it was going to survive. The sound of the blues was never exactly going to go out of style, but every single subgenre of rock and roll is always going to need something to take its place. Grunge was exactly what everyone needed after one too many years of hair metal, and when the Stones were at the top of the world in the 1970s, punk wasn’t that far behind.

The biggest names in rock and roll had become far too pompous for most fans to take, and hearing bands like Sex Pistols and Ramones helped remind everyone of the roots of the genre. Rock didn’t have to be the most complicated thing in the world to touch people’s hearts, and while Richards did enjoy what he heard every now and again, he didn’t think that all of them were exactly on the same level as the rest of the world.

Then again, the old guard tended to have mixed emotions when it came to punk. John Lennon had said that he felt a familiarity when looking at the biggest punk acts, and Pete Townshend could practically claim to have invented the genre when working on ‘My Generation’ back in the day, but Richards felt that the first iteration of punk needed a few more half-decent musicians if they wanted to get anywhere.

The energy was certainly there, but Richards felt that the finesse of those bands left a lot to be desired, saying, “The only trouble with the punks is none of them could really play! I loved the attitude, y’know, but where’s the music? And that was their letdown. But otherwise, it was a matter of attitude more than anything else. It was about energy, and it was a kick up our ass.” That might be a backhanded compliment, but it’s not like The Stones could claim to be the most dangerous in the world at the time, either.

They still had their moments of seeming legitimately sleazy, but there are also more than a few tunes on Some Girls that left a lot to be desired. Their flirtation with dance music was always going to be a little bit of a letdown for fans, but even when they started to get nastier, hearing them embrace the sounds of punk and get a little bit more aggressive on ‘Respectable’ felt like all of the energy that they had on ‘Rip This Joint’ finally returned for a second.

And when looking at the stone age of punk, it’s not like Richards didn’t take their aesthetics to heart. No one needed to have the fanciest equipment to make a great song, and even though Tom Waits is in a genre all by himself a lot of the time, you can hear a lot of what Richards was doing on his own songs crossing over to what those other musical weirdos were doing whenever they came out with a record.

Because while Richards was the furthest thing from the punks that would put safety pins through their noses, he could tell that their style was right up his alley. He could definitely throw together a few chords that were better than what Steve Jones was doing in his early days, but the important part was having mountains of attitude and the conviction that you were going to make the best music that you could whenever the red light came on.