The guitarist who missed out on joining The Rolling Stones, according to Keith Richards
Becoming a member of The Rolling Stones was about something more than musicianship to Keith Richards.
Anyone could plug in and play the best solos that they could note-perfect whenever they wanted to, but there’s a certain tribal quality to the way that every member of the band interacts whenever they kick into a groove on some of their best tunes. And while Richards was no slouch as both a rhythm and lead guitarist, there had to be a very particular guitar slinger who was going to fill the slot that every one of their predecessors had left for them.
But when you look at what Richards brings to the table, he could have easily made things work as the only guitar player in the band. He was a sonic architect in many respects whenever they made a record, and while he wasn’t going to rip out the same kind of fluid leads that Mick Taylor could whenever he performed, he could make the band surge and jump in a way that no one else could when he kicked off the riff to ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’. But from a musical perspective, you could tell that they needed more.
And while Taylor didn’t always fit the same ethos that the Stones were going for, Ronnie Wood seemed destined to be a member of the band years before he even started playing with them. He looked the part, he had the right swagger to him whenever he performed, and even when he was working off of Richards in a live setting, his leads were never too distracting from the song whenever they kicked off tunes like ‘Paint It Black’ or ‘Gimme Shelter’.
He might have been the new boy for a while, but Richards had already been toying with the idea of bringing in other guitar legends into the fold. Jimmy Page had already laid down some tasty leads on some of their outtakes, and even Jeff Beck was in talks to join the band before choosing to move on to his solo career. But if the Stones wanted to be a true supergroup, Eric Clapton would have been the perfect choice when they were first looking for some fresh blood in the mix.
After all, all of them seemed to have the same influences. Clapton was always going to be a blues aficionado, and since he had absorbed the kind of singer-songwriter approach that he heard from The Band, it wouldn’t have been that hard for him to transfer that style of playing over to the country-leaning songs that Richards was working on throughout the 1970s, like ‘Far Away Eyes’ and ‘Wild Horses’.
But before they even had a chance to jam, Richards said that he wasn’t going to bother reaching out if ‘Slowhand’ had his own solo career going on, saying, “Eric wanted to jump in after Mick Taylor, but never did say so. But he expected us to call, although I only just found out. There are certain guys that are band players and there’s certain guys that ain’t. If there’s anybody lazier than me, it’s Eric. He’s got it all, but Eric’s like Mick Taylor in a way. He needs to hire guys to play with him to kick him up the arse.”
Hearing Clapton on a Stones song would have certainly been interesting, but it’s not like he was destined to be in yet another supergroup. His entire life centred around being a bluesy troubadour, and while he would have been happy to have a few jam sessions with his buddies, there was no reason for him to get tied up with another band only to leave them hanging when he wasn’t getting the sounds that he heard in his head.
And considering what both of them were capable of, they never wanted to hold each other back whenever they played, either. Every band is about compromise in some capacity, and while The Stones could have accommodated Clapton a few times, the real tragedy would be for them to potentially discard songs like ‘Wonderful Tonight’ or ‘Cocaine’.
