When it comes to the Rolling Stones, most folks are either Keith people or Mick people. (There are some exceptions; I’m a Charlie Watts person, but those exceptions are rare.) Mick people are drawn to the glamorous, front-man side of rock ‘n’ roll; Keith people are drawn to the tone and some of the more down ‘n’ dirty aspects of the music. And right now, the Keith people are getting the attention.
Keith’s out with a new autobiography, which is getting generally positive reviews and looks like an irresistible read (even for me, and one of the great shames in my life is how little time I spend reading books any more). He reportedly talks some serious smack about Mick (it’s no secret that the once-inseparable duo can barely tolerate each other any more), but based on the excerpts I’ve read so far, I think I’m going to care more about Keith’s descriptions of his own musical awakening.
“As impressed as I was with Elvis,” Richards writes, “I was even more impressed by Scotty Moore and the band. It was the same with Ricky Nelson. I never bought a Ricky Nelson record, I bought a James Burton record. It was the bands behind them that impressed me just as much as the front men. Little Richard’s band, which was basically the same as Fats Domino’s band, was actually Dave Bartholomew’s band. I knew all this. I was just impressed by ensemble playing. It was how guys interacted with one another, natural exuberance and seemingly effortless delivery. There was a beautiful flippancy, it seemed to me. And of course that goes even more for Chuck Berry’s band. But from the start it wasn’t just the singer. What had to impress me behind the singer would be the band.”
Nobody could describe the feeling of playing in a band — a real band, not just a group of hired guns put together for a gig — better than that.
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If you’re a Mick person (or heck, a Keith person), d’ya want to read something else that’s fascinating? Last week, Slate posted this note that purports to be from Mick, responding to the general slagging Mick got in Keith’s autobiography. It’s fantastic — not just as a response, not just from an amateur-hour psychological standpoint, but because it’s so well-written. If the note really is from Mick, it reaffirms what you probably already knew: Keith may be the guts of the band, but Mick is the brains, and those brains are what has kept the Stones viable for decades.
