(Credits: Far Out / Raph Pour-Hashemi)
Sun 2 November 2025 16:30, UK
One of the essential creative frissons in The Rolling Stones was guitarist Keith Richards’ anchorage to rock’s early foundations.
Such a grip on Americana’s sediments of blues and country always pulled one end of the Stones’ tug of war between frontman Mick Jagger’s ear to the ground for pop’s evolving trends.
Following their rootsy golden age from Beggars Banquet to Exile on Main St, subsequent albums would chart a course that further thumbed the scales in favour of Jagger’s soaking up of disco and punk by the 1970s’ end. Into the next decade, internal fractures and battling egos resulted in the pair’s solo ventures, Jagger playing the MTV contender with 1985’s She’s the Boss, and Richards dropping his vintage old-school jam LP Talk is Cheap three years later.
Not that Jagger didn’t love the blues too. To former bassist Bill Wyman’s scoffing dismissal—rightly pointing out that the Stones was actually founded and captained in London by Cheltenham boy Brian Jones—but Dartford railway station’s platform two boasts a blue plaque proudly marking the moment the young local teen Richards spotted old Wentworth Primary School mate Jagger waiting for the train with rare Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters imports tucked under his arm. The Stones didn’t form there and then, as Dartford Borough Council erroneously states, but rock history certainly was forged.
Through countercultural stature, future stardom, and the lofty dwell at the peaks of popular music’s Everest heights into the Stones’ six decades on, it’s easy to imagine Richards would have been just as happy rolling out his beloved blues the entire time on much smaller stages as playing the whole rock star schtick.
Like Eric Clapton, when discussing his formative heroes, Richards will sooner reel off the elder blues maestros than much of the contemporary scene with which he found fame. Howlin’ Wolf, John Lee Hooker, and Robert Johnson all loom large in Richards’ hall of fame, but one lesser-known blues pioneer arguably towered over the rest in the ‘human riff’s estimation.
“A lot of those blues players of the mid-50s, Albert King and BB King, were single-note players,” Richards once stated. “T-Bone Walker was one of the first to use the double-string thing, and Chuck [Berry] got a lot out of T-Bone. Musically impossible, but it works”.
It’s quite a legacy to leave when even Berry labels you as one of his main influences, and King credits ‘Stormy Monday’ for picking up the electric guitar, stating in his autobiography that he had become Walker’s “disciple” there and then. Pushing the electric guitar to the fore in a way few bluesmen had before him, his influence extended well into rock and roll and the next decade’s countercultural explosion with his on-stage animated performances, influencing a young Jimi Hendrix with his novel teeth-on-the-strings trick.
Richards viewed the blues tradition as an almost mystical energy that flowed through each generation, but he knew where it all started. “I listened to every lick he [Berry] played and picked it up,” he confessed. “Chuck got it from T-Bone Walker, and I got it from Chuck, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, and BB King. We’re all part of this family that goes back thousands of years. Really, we’re all passing it on”.
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