• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 665 0

you know which one you’re hearing within a couple of seconds because of the riff, and there is always a different combination of groove and tone and sig. lick that brings it home. It takes genuine talent and amazing patience to make all this—indeed, it takes a fair amount of ability just to recreate it, even after someone like Keith has done all the pioneering work. Keith, with his rhythm section, has probably created more truly great riffs than any other rock’n’roller, maybe up to six dozen utterly recognizable, one of a kind, winning riffs. And somehow he not only dated all these delicate beauties, he also knew they were winners when he first set ears on them. You have to be prescient to know when you’ve got one. Some of these conquests were simply bizarre, twisted trysts, like the “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” riff, while others were a risky rendezvous, like the “Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown” riff, which is actually painful to listen to, and is intended to be. “Ouch Keith. Turn it up, would you? Oh yes, here it comes.” She loves the way you play that guitar.

The Singer, Not the Song

All of what I’m trying to get at is completely apart from and basically unrelated to Keith’s songwriting, both with and without Mick. The songwriting isn’t a wholly separate activity for the Stones, because sometimes the riff and groove produced the occasion and inspiration for the song. Commonly Keith would have a hook line to go with the riff and groove and say to Mick what the hook was, and show him the riff and groove, and then Mick would just start singing it or jotting down the words. That is, for sure, its own kind of promethean feat. But the songwriting part, even as it touches on the issue of rhythm, is a different matter than the “It” I am chasing right now.

I’m still trying to explain why Keith’s peers regard him as among the greatest guitarists of his generation. And when you consider that the same song can be played (successfully, consider Clapton’s slow version of “Lala”) with many different grooves, and that the riff can be varied and re-interpreted as needed, it becomes clear that this isn’t so much about songs as about the “how” the song comes to feel like rock’n’roll. Christopher Guest, Michael McKeon and Harry Shearer (the Folksmen) have made it clear enough that even a song as tied to its groove as “Start Me Up” can be played in a bluegrass groove (if “groove” is even the right word for it) … and the less said about that, the better.

So this isn’t about being a great songwriter, it’s about exploring the possibilities that the invention of the electric guitar made available, in amazing and unexpected ways. These sounds had never been heard by human ears, as Keith points out. Keith was in the first generation of musicians who really saw how rich the possibilities were, and who set off into that terra incognita and returned with some of the best treasure. It requires a peculiar curiosity, a certain tenacity, a singular power of focus and concentration, and above all a complete passion for just this kind of journey, to explain what Keith Richards did. The people who have tried to explore this territory, and who really understand what it takes to succeed, rightly stand in awe of Keith Richards as a guitar player. To say Keith Richards isn’t a great guitar player is sort of like saying Christopher Columbus wasn’t a great sea captain. Whatever the faults, we’re all permanently changed by the exploration, for better and for worse.

A Steady Synthesis of the Data

I confess: For years I believed Charlie Watts wasn’t a great drummer—hell, I didn’t even think he was very good. I admitted, along with everyone, that he certainly was rock steady, and there is a lot to be said for that. But steady drummers are out there. Every city has a dozen or so, and the good bands stand in line to try to capture such drummers, especially if they don’t have debilitating drug habits or personality problems. But even then, if they can be counted on to show up for the gig, the rest can be dealt with as needed. Rock drummers don’t have to be