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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy \/ Apple Corps LTD)<\/p>\n
Thu 21 August 2025 19:00, UK <\/p>\n
Keith Richards<\/a> has never been shy about sharing his opinions.<\/p>\n From his throne as one of rock\u2019s most revered and respected figures, he casts his opinions down onto the public with no worries about ruffled feathers. But sometimes, he goes it hard on a take that simply feels wrong.<\/p>\n \u201cI think The Beatles had passed their performing peak even before they were famous,\u201d Richards once said, and instantly, eyebrows were raised. The Rolling Stones came up just after the band. Richards and Mick Jagger were essentially John Lennon and Paul McCartney\u2019s juniors, following just behind in their footsteps for the British invasion, so with all of The Stones\u2019 comments about the band, there is a slight tone of a put-out or bratty younger sibling.<\/p>\n The Beatles played into that too, as Lennon once even tried to claim that he and McCartney were the only reason the two even wrote songs, that they basically intimidated the Glimmer Twins into getting to work<\/a>. Despite the friendship between them, the relationship was brotherly and so often volatile. The Beatles took credit for The Stones, and in turn, The Stones often lashed out with stroppy comments like \u2018They weren\u2019t even that good anyway\u2019.<\/p>\n However, Richards\u2019 claim that The Beatles peaked before they even made it is downright wrong. He\u2019s suggesting that if we scratched all their albums and evolution post 1963 from the record that they\u2019d have a better legacy, and that\u2019s laughable.<\/p>\n Specifically, though, he zones in on one chapter. \u201cI think they got carried away. Why not? If you\u2019re The Beatles in the \u201960s, you just get carried away\u2014you forget what it is you wanted to do. You\u2019re starting to do Sgt Pepper,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cSome people think it\u2019s a genius album, but I think it\u2019s a mishmash of rubbish.\u201d<\/p>\n His opinion of Sgt Pepper\u2019s Lonely Hearts Club Band is somewhat besides the point here. There are plenty of people who think that album is overrated or simply not as strong in terms of hits or songs as some of the other records. But what Richards fundamentally misunderstood in his reading of it was the purpose of the album.<\/p>\n The point of the 1967 record was to get, in his words, \u201ccarried away\u201d. After also stating \u201cthe live thing? They were never quite there\u201d<\/a>, claiming that the band never were that good as a live act, he fails to understand that an album like Sgt Pepper\u2019s was the ultimate antidote to that. <\/p>\n