(Credits: Far Out / Raph Pour-Hashemi)
Thu 4 December 2025 16:00, UK
Keith Richards has never taken a second of his time on this Earth for granted.
While logic dictates that he should be considered a mutant for surviving all those years of drug abuse, the biggest part of his career these days is about celebrating all of those classic riffs that The Rolling Stones made back in the day. But amid all of the great licks that he put together for The Stones, all of the magic comes from him delving through his record collection to see where he got all his tunes from.
Granted, it’s not like he hit it off with every one of his heroes. It’s no secret that he had a few arguments with Chuck Berry when he started playing with him for a few shows, but was that going to sour his taste for songs like ‘Johnny B Goode’? Absolutely not. Berry started it all for people like him, and he was going to do everything he could to make sure that he was half as cool as him.
But when listening to The Stones’ music, it’s hard to see too much Berry influence in the ballads that they played or the odd country songs. Mick Jagger may have wanted to switch things up every single time the band went into the studio, but there’s a certain sweet spot for the band that tends to fall in between rock and roll and country music, especially when they break out the acoustics on tracks like ‘Wild Horses’ or ‘Sweet Virginia’.
All that’s well and good, but if you take out the blues from The Stones, you’re left with almost nothing. The band could certainly work outside of that musical style if they wanted, but when looking at the likes of Muddy Waters or Buddy Guy, you can hear the heart of all great blues rock in the way they play, especially with Guy’s massive stage presence whenever he took one of his solos.
And without those records, Keef probably wouldn’t have met up with his partner in crime all over again. He and Jagger were boyhood friends, but their musical connection came back to when they met each other in London and started talking about a bunch of records that Jagger had with him.
Even though Richards has been able to take the blues in a myriad of different directions, there was still something about those old blues records that he wouldn’t have traded for the world back in the day, saying, “You are what you listen to, in a way, and I never stopped listening to the blues. Even if I go off on other tangents, there’s always that basic diet, thank God.” But it’s about more than a few three-chord tunes that kept them coming back whenever they unearthed those old Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson songs.
A lot of them may have had a basic blues chord progression, but it was always about the kind of grit that the singer put into it. It might not be the hardest thing in the world to play all the time, but the reason why they got away with doing a cover with a song like ‘Love in Vain’ on Let It Bleed is that you can hear the pain in Jagger’s voice the same way that you could hear Johnson’s pain on the original.
And given how well the blues have seemed to work for The Stones every single time they go on the road, perhaps there is some sort of divine intervention going on with them whenever they start playing. They were always the consummate blues students whenever they performed, and after years of learning from the greatest teachers in the business, they can take their ranks among the modern masters, showing everyone what the genre could do.
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