In addition to being a legendary musician venerated as the lead guitarist of The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards is also known for his razor-sharp tongue. While his penchant for hard living might be the thing he is most notorious for outside of music, with there many famous stories that prop up his creative output, alongside pushing it to the absolute limit, Richards has never been one to mince his words. Whether it be Oasis, Elton John, David Bowie, or even Prince, the British icon is afraid of no one when it comes to criticism. They’ve all been exposed to his vitriol over the years.
This brash, abrasive nature seems only natural for a man who so brazenly flaunted musical and cultural mores with The Rolling Stones during their heyday. Accordingly, he has provided an array of surprising takes over the years, which range from the outlandish to the outright offensive. He once said of Elton John: “An old bitch… his writing is limited to songs about dead blondes”.
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While most of Richards’ most damning takes have been about artists you wouldn’t necessarily expect him to like, perhaps his most surprising critique is that of fellow blues adherents, The Band. Rock ‘n’ roll purists who crafted one of the most potent forms of Americana ever captured on record, as affirmed by classics such as ‘The Weight’ and their widely influential 1968 debut album, Music from Big Pink, you’d be forgiven for presuming that Richards would be a big fan.
However, neither this musical connection, nor the fact that The Band were the perfect ballast for Bob Dylan going electric, were ultimately enough to make Richards a fan of the Canadian-American outfit. Moreover, his opinion of them was crystallised when he saw them back the curly-haired troubadour during his iconic headline set at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1969. It’s safe to say that he was probably the only person in the audience who hated it.
“I was disappointed. Dylan was beautiful, especially when he did the songs by himself,” Richards once recalled. “The Band were just too strict. They’ve been playing together for a long, long time, and what I couldn’t understand was their lack of spontaneity. They sounded note for note like their records. … They just didn’t seem to come alive by themselves. I think that they’re essentially an accompanying band.”
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- 1960s rock
- Americana
- Bob Dylan
- Classic Rock
- Keith Richards
- rock criticism
- The Band
- The Rolling Stones
