Keith Richards has never been an easy guitarist to impress. Throughout his time working with The Rolling Stones, Richards has been known to tear anyone through the mud that he thought was making music that wasn’t up to his standards. Although Richards could lay down the law on any unsuspecting musician, he felt that one guitarist stood out among the rest as the greatest in his field.
When discussing the greatest musicians in Richards’ mind, it all tends to return to the blues. Although he may have loved everything from jazz to R&B in his time, Richards grew up idolising the sounds of old bluesmen that he heard growing up, embracing the sounds of everyone from Muddy Waters to Robert Johnson.
That love eventually landed Richards the gig in The Rolling Stones, coming into the fold along with Mick Jagger to fill out Brian Jones’ new outfit. Although the band could undoubtedly deliver blues rock better than anyone else on the scene, they quickly became a different entity when Jagger and Richards began writing songs together.
Taking the basis of blues music, Richards started to give birth to the first significant rock guitar riffs, playing songs that lived off of the distorted guitar like ‘Satisfaction’ and ‘Get Off My Cloud’. Once the band started moving in a different direction, though, Jones became disillusioned, thinking that his band was being taken away from him.
Feeling like he couldn’t contribute to the band’s later material, Jones would find himself out of step with the rest of the band before he was let go in the late 1960s. After Jones’ departure, the band entertained the idea of having another technician behind the fretboard, guitarist Jeff Beck, then known for his unique innovations on guitar.
While the band went with Mick Taylor instead, Richards always found it inspiring whenever he listened to Beck play. Formerly of The Yardbirds, Beck was known for taking the guitar into different territory, using it as a tool and creating lead lines that sounded closer to a human voice than anything coming out at the time.
Remembering the influence that Beck had on the guitar community, Richards would count the guitarist among one of the best in his field, telling Guitar World, “He was a tremendous player. The odd times we got together, I was always amazed by the stuff that he did with his tremolo bar. He was one of the best, man”.
Then again, Beck may have wanted to branch out more than what The Stones had to offer. Although the idea of being in one of the biggest bands in the world may have been a tough decision, the lead work he did on tracks like ‘Cause We’ve Ended As Lovers’ may have been too outlandish than what the band would have wanted at the time.
For all of the creative differences that the group may have had, both acts ended up turning in equally strong albums independent from each other. While it’s anyone’s guess as to what a Rolling Stones album would sound like with Beck behind the fretboard, it’s better to have both Exile on Main St and Blow by Blow simultaneously than ponder on what they could have made together.
