“WE WERE IN A MAELSTROM”
Uncut has spoken to Keith many times over the years. In this excerpt from a 2017 interview, he looks back across the Stones’ transformative 1960s
UNCUT: The Stones were very tenacious early in their career, weren’t they? RICHARDS: Yeah. But it was fastmoving. ’63 particularly – that was a year of speed, man. Everything was happening all at once. We were in a maelstrom. People were saying to us, “You can do this, you can do that.” Brian was a great promoter.
I often think the early Stones get overshadowed by what came later in the ’60s. Do you think that’s true? The thing just got bigger and bigger, and obviously as we went on we got more experienced. By the time you get to Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed, this band is in full flow. On the early stuff, there’s always this tentative feel to it. It took a while to record the Stones properly. You know you can play it, but could they capture it?
The transformation is very acute. It’s only a few years, but the Stones of 1964, say, are a very different band from the Stones of 1967. The changeover came from being a bar band, where you just stood between the drumkit and the bass player – only Mick had a little bit of room to move. We weren’t at all prepared for the big stage. It was learning on the job. All of it. Thank God our first tour was with Bo Diddley and Little Richard and the Everly Brothers.
You were a very tight-knit group, weren’t you? Hey, you’re living in the back of a Volkswagen truck with no windows for 300 days a year, you get tight!
The setlists from the late ’60s tell an incredible story. When you come back in 1969, after a two-year absence from touring, only “Satisfaction” remains in the set. It felt like a scorched earth policy. Was that the case? Quite possibly. During those years, between 1965 and ’69, a lot of growing up went on. By then we’d been exposed to America and playing with other guys, it was a matter of evolving. I don’t think anybody made a decision, “We’re going to change track.” In a way, you are what you listen to, and in America during the middle ’60s we were listening to some of the best R&B, the best blues, the best everything really. We got more experienced.
I always thought you’d outgrown Britain. That’s a good way of looking at it. I’d never thought of it like that. The Beatles did, too. This was the first global musical explosion, I guess.
What was it that changed you, then?
By ’67, we were pretty burned out by the road. We did Between The Buttons, I think. It was the first period where we had substantial time off. We weren’t working the proverbial 350 days a year, so there was more time for reflection. At the same time, the whole world was getting turned on. After that, instead of writing in a motel room on the road, Mick and I started to write in a studio or wherever. We had some time to deal with it. You know, I remember when “Satisfaction” came out and we were just going, “Whoa, man. This is bigger than I thought it was.” There’s a knock at the door and somebody’s going, “Where’s the followup?” To which we replied, “Get off my cloud!”