Richards trashes ‘greatest album ever’
Some people think it’s a genius album, but I think it’s a mishmash of rubbish, kind of like Satanic Majesties. Keith Richards on
Among music critics and the public, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band is routinely cited as the best album released.
The Beatles’ 1967 concept record is the third most popular album sold in Britain and has worldwide sales of more than 30 million, but to Keith Richards it is ‘‘a mishmash of rubbish’’ from a band that was high on its own success. The Rolling Stones guitarist said that he had no time for the album, which he suggested was a self-indulgent experiment and a musical failure.
‘‘The Beatles sounded great when they were The Beatles,’’ he said in an interview in Esquire magazine. ‘‘But there’s not a lot of roots in that music. I think they got carried away. Why not? If you’re The Beatles in the Sixties you just get carried away, you forget what it is you wanted to do. You’re starting to do Sgt Pepper.’’
He compared the experimental sound to the Rolling Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request, a psychedelic album that Richards and Mick Jagger have described as a failure despite reaching No 3 in the UK albums chart.
Richards said that Sgt Pepper, which came out six months before Their Satanic Majesties Request, was hugely overrated. ‘‘Some people think it’s a genius album, but I think it’s a mishmash of rubbish, kind of like Satanic Majesties – ‘Oh, if you can make a load of s***, so can we’.’’
Sgt Pepper was branded the ‘‘greatest album of all time’’ by Rolling Stone magazine, which described it as ‘‘the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, over art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time’’.
Paul McCartney did not respond to a request for comment, but Richards’s bandmate Ronnie Wood said that he had nothing but respect for Sgt Pepper.
‘‘I think it was way up there. I’m a huge fan of everything The Beatles put out.
‘‘It’s right up there with Pet Sounds [by the Beach Boys] and outstanding albums of the time.’’
When the Rolling Stones first toured America there were repeated reports about their rivalry with The Beatles, though band members have since suggested that it was false.
Ringo Starr, the Beatles’ drummer, has said that it was ‘‘cooked up’’ for publicity purposes while Charlie Watts, Starr’s counterpart with the Rolling Stones, confirmed it was ‘‘made up’’.
McCartney said in 2011 that Jagger would refer to The Beatles as ‘‘the four-headed monster’’ and suggested that the Rolling Stones envied the Fab Four’s singing abilities.
‘‘I talked to Keith Richards recently . . . well, a couple of years ago, and his take on it was: ‘Man, you were lucky, you guys, you had four lead singers,’ whereas the Rolling Stones only had one. I could sing, John could sing, George could sing and Ringo did numbers that he could sing. So it wasn’t just the front man and the back-up band.’’
Richards, 71, has form in criticising rock legends. He said that Led Zeppelin ‘‘never took off for me, musically’’ and wrote in his memoirs that Jagger had a small penis.
The guitarist suggested in the Esquire interview that Bill Wyman, his former bandmate, took himself too seriously over an incident involving a plaque at Dartford station, which marked the place where Jagger and Richards met but omitted Wyman’s name as a founder member.
Richards said: ‘‘I don’t know exactly what [the plaque] said, but Mick just the other day came up to me and says, ‘Do you believe this s***, man? Bill Wyman is complaining about the plaque at Dartford station.’ I said, ‘A plaque? I thought we had a statue.’
‘‘I know he took umbrage with that, but I can’t understand why. Bill wasn’t there when the band was formed. Ian Stewart formed the band – we gravitated around him. I think Mick sent a note saying – because Bill comes from a town called Penge – ‘Bill, if a plaque went up in Penge station that said you were the founding member of the Rolling Stones, do you think we’d complain?’’
The Times