“There’s not much substance to it”: The Rolling Stones song Keith Richards could live without
With a catalogue as big as The Rolling Stones can boast, there comes a moment when any band member couldn’t keep track of everything. After all, the number of songs that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote together has to be in the thousands by now, and considering that some songs ended up being released on separate versions in America, it’s hard to pin down what single fits where in the band’s core catalogue of records. Richards may be defiantly proud of many of his best works, but he could have done without one particular tune ever being released.
Then again, every piece of The Stones helps tell more of the story. Even though they have spent many of their tours riding off the nostalgia that people had for their early material, there is still the occasional song that sounds magnificent in context, like hearing them deliver a stunner like ‘Sweet Sounds of Heaven’ in their older age.
For every experiment that works, though, there’s one that sounds incredibly haphazard, and the 1980s may as well have been a field day for that kind of experiment. The band were trying everything they could to stay current, but no matter how much Richards pushed back against Jagger’s wishes, it didn’t stop albums like Dirty Work from sounding completely incoherent from one song to the next.
Once they got a better footing on albums like Voodoo Lounge in the 1990s, they seemed a bit more hardened again. They had spent years trying to be someone else, but somewhere along the line, they figured out that the best way to make a new record was to play to their strengths and see what happened. However, there is a way to go too far in the opposite direction as well.
When putting together songs for albums like Forty Licks, ‘Don’t Stop’ became one of the breakout singles from the project. While far from being the most innovative song they would ever write, seeing the band back in full force with a signature Richards lick was the kind of thing that would get asses in seats when they hit the road for another tour.
As far as Richards saw it, though, he would be able to rest easy at night had he forgotten everything about the tune, saying, “I can probably live without ‘Don’t Stop’, although I enjoyed playing it – it’s a pretty little thing, and you can sizzle it off, but there’s not much substance to it.” And considering its reputation as an also-ran in their catalogue, it’s not hard to see where Richards gets that idea.
The song might do a serviceable job working as a live cut, but going through everything as a pure Stones fan, there’s not that much to work with. Outside of a few moments of excitement, some of the best moments of it feel like they’ve been Frankensteined from other Stones classics and stitched together to sound like something new.
The rock icons may rely on genres like blues to get them to where they are, but there are only so many times people can go down that road without repeating themselves. And considering how little the band have paid attention to ‘Don’t Stop’ in the coming years, it’s not like it’s going to be replacing ‘Satisfaction’ any time soon.
