The one song Keith Richards never got tired of hearing: “There was a wisdom in it”
There comes a time in every musician’s life when they realise they will never write a riff as good as Keith Richards has.
While many rock musicians have had great musical pieces in their system whenever they played, Richards has been the human riff machine for over half a century, always trying to twist those open tunings a little bit further until he finds something that sounds right. But even for someone with that many classics, Richards figured no riff would have worked if it wasn’t connected to the right song.
While The Rolling Stones did end up writing their own songs by force in the early days, what Richards was looking for was that subtle sound that perked everyone’s ears up when they heard it. There are a handful that were almost too good to fail, like ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ and ‘Satisfaction’, but when listening to a song like ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, it’s as much about how the rest of the band interacts with the riff as it is about whether or not the guitars sound good in the mix.
Because as much as Richards loved to jam whenever he could, his record collection was all about people who had something to say. Countless blues acts were known to stretch out their solos for as long as they wanted, but when listening to those early BB King and Robert Johnson records, what they had to say was as important as the leads they were playing, especially on tracks like ‘Love in Vain’ and ‘Me and the Devil Blues’.
But the blues were only one small part of what made Richards tick. The blues helped birth rock and roll, and there wasn’t a day that went by that he wasn’t grateful for the likes of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but it took Gram Parsons for him to realise the kind of beauty that country music brought to the world.
And while countless people will roll their eyes about the goofy lyrics in some of those old country songs, they were also able to make the most jaded hearts shed a tear when they wanted to. The likes of George Jones and Waylon Jennings were among the best storytellers of their time, and while Richards fell in love with that sound almost immediately, they all had nothing on what he heard out of Merle Haggard.
Even after the country legend’s passing, Richards still felt that ‘Sing Me Back Home’ was one of the most touching songs that he had ever heard, saying, “When Merle broke through, he was akin to Johnny Cash in the starkness of the sound. But it was more melodic. You felt like this guy knew shit. There was a wisdom in it. I still sing and play ‘Sing Me Back Home’ on the piano. That’s my party piece, baby. It’s just so real, so touching. There’s a guy on death row. You know when this song finishes, it’s all over.”
At the same time, The Stones were able to appreciate the inherent silliness of the genre as well. No one was acting like any of these songwriters were absolute scholars by any stretch, and listening to them play tunes like ‘Far Away Eyes’ did at least show that Richards could get a bit goofy, especially when Mick Jagger breaks out into that faux Southern accent and starts talking his way through the final verses.
But the core part of people like Haggard comes from that one element Richards brought up: wisdom. There was no doubt that all of the artists of Haggard’s generation had done their fair share of living, and even if the tunes were tongue-in-cheek, they could at least give people a few lessons to learn in between the sliding licks.
