“Everything that came out was a smash”: The rock star Keith Richards considered as good as Elvis
For any rock and roll fan, The Rolling Stones have always been one of the cornerstones of the entire genre. Even if they weren’t there at the inception when Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins started having hits, hearing them be the bad-boy antecedent to The Beatles is exactly what many people wanted to hear to feel a bit more dangerous. Keith Richards may have epitomised that kind of mentality, but even he had a few of his heroes that he looked up to as well.
Because looking through every one of the band’s greatest hits, there are always quiet callbacks to the old bluesmen who started it all back in the day. Mick Jagger had first met Richards when discussing the old-school blues artists, and despite them not quite fitting into that mould, they turned rock and roll into their own bluesy medium, practically making their own classics when tackling ‘Midnight Rambler’ or putting together every tune on Exile on Main St.
While Jagger could light up the stage whenever he performed any of their tunes, though, there was always going to be the looming shadow of Elvis Presley lurking in the background. Despite his voice being an acquired taste for some people, Presley is always going to be known as the one who broke down doors for rock and roll, from the way that he danced to his haunting voice to his ability to get the girls screaming every time he stepped in front of an audience.
Even though the labels might have seen the dollar signs in between the frenzy, there was always something more to it for Richards. He paid more attention to how the song worked, and since his idols like Chuck Berry wrote all of their own material, he made sure to keep up his habit of writing any riff he could.
In terms of songwriting during the stone age of rock, though, Buddy Holly tends to get lost in the lurch a bit. He is still considered one of the greatest examples of a pop rocker at the time, but when listening to the drastic turns that his songs would take, bands like The Beatles suddenly didn’t have the fear of changing to chords that didn’t necessarily fit into the key. This was a new type of vocabulary, and Richards was more than willing to listen.
Despite Presley being considered ‘The King,’ Richards said that Holly was a big enough presence to rival him growing up, saying, “Mick had been singing with some rock and roll bands, doing Buddy Holly… Buddy Holly was in England as solid as Elvis. Everything that came out was a record smash No. 1. By about ’58, it was either Elvis or Buddy Holly.”
While there has been a halo around Holly’s work due to the fact that he died so young, the reason his songs today is because they are still perfect slices of pop music. Even though many people had tried harmony vocals by the time he started, hearing the simple two-part vocal in a song like ‘Words of Love’ was much more tender than hearing Presley blurt out ‘Jailhouse Rock’ at the top of his lungs.
Despite the wire-rimmed rock legend only being one facet of what Richards could do, it says something about his music that he was able to give Presley a run for his money. Presley may have got the girls screaming through pure sex appeal, but Holly could get the job done by making the best tunes he knew how to make.
