The Rolling Stones and Philosophy_ It's Just a Thought Away - Luke Dick [65]
The thing about the rhythm section for The Stones is that all three of those protons are very quirky. None of these guys plays quite “right.” Let me explain, but I have to begin with a crucial point, and if you don’t get this, if you can’t find a way to hear this, most of what I say later won’t resonate: Charlie interprets Keith, and then Bill interprets Charlie and closes back on Keith, and it happens in that order, pretty much all the time. That’s what is between the buttons. Now let’s divide up what can’t really be divided and move among the vibrations that make It happen.
A Date with Keith
Keith just is Prometheus with a five-stringed lightning rod. He’s the one who pulls the grooves and riffs in from the atmosphere and shares them with the band. Until Keith arrives, it’s all just the bare past and lame possibility, just data for a world that may never exist, nothing happening. And if Keith is off, the Stones will be off, but that doesn’t happen too much. Almost no matter what Keith is on, he’s almost never off. He can call down the lightning even in a stupor. (And Keith having an off night is like other people having the best night of their lives.)
But Keith doesn’t play “right” and he doesn’t play “nice.” He’s usually just a little bit (in other words, perfectly) out of tune, and he doesn’t bother much with details, and he doesn’t fret about the frets. It’s a little sloppy, if you only notice what it sounds like and forget to notice what it does. He doesn’t play flashy at all, and once the song kicks in, it’s difficult to descry exactly what Keith is playing and what the other guitarist is adding. Keith isn’t even describable as either a lead or a rhythm player, he’s a little bundle of pure activity confronting a wide universe of possibilities and memories and taking just what he wants for a little date, by force if necessary.
To the guitar purist, and to the critics who are expecting something to gratify their critical reflections, Keith is something of an enigma. I have heard so many people, the types whose rock understanding is just the conventional cool, and whose actual rock experience is limited to garage bands at most, say that they don’t understand why Keith’s name is mentioned in the same company as the greatest guitar players of the age—Clapton, Hendrix, Page, Beck. How does Keith Richards command the respect, even the awe, of such virtuosos, and their successors like Eddie Van Halen? Is it just because he’s one of the Stones and so he’s automatically in the club? That isn’t it. The people who will tell you Keith isn’t really a great guitar player (I have even heard some say he sucks) have no clue what a guitar really does in the context of creating the rhythmic feel of a band. They think of great guitar playing as the fast and flashy more than the furious and gutsy, and they probably have no notion of the promethean groovemaker and riffmaster. And they imagine that it’s more challenging to be creative with lead lines than with great grooves and amazing, ear catching simple riffs.
They’re wrong. And if they don’t at least admit that they can hear the greatness, if not account for it, then they are also fools. Even just finding (let alone discovering) the grooves that make your body jump, involuntarily, and creating the riffs people can’t get out of their heads is far, far more difficult, musically speaking, than playing fast or freaky lead lines. The riff and groove are the batter and bake of the rock’n’roll cake, and it’s more important, and tougher to master,