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Tue 18 August 2026 22:07, UK
While he’s a calmer soul these days, it didn’t take much to rattle Keith Richards‘ cage as a younger gentleman, and no band was off limits when it came to a verbal takedown.
Even if you were one of Richards’ friends, like Jimmy Page, for example, who he’d known before either were household names, the Rolling Stones guitarist wasn’t going to allow friendship to get in the way of him dunking on Led Zeppelin.
While The Beatles are viewed as the sacred cows of the musical world, Richards never rated them as a live band, once saying, “Musically, The Beatles had a lovely sound and great songs. But the live thing? They were never quite there.”
Rumour even has it that Richards once drunkenly caught a glimpse of himself in a mirror and hurled an insult at it before realising it was him. The Rolling Stones rocker has been swaggering around since the 1960s with little reverence for anyone but himself and maybe Aretha Franklin, the only artist he has praised without stacking the other scale with an insult.
With all that considered, is it any great surprise that he didn’t jump for joy when three kids from California emerged as Creedence Clearwater Revival and laid down a marker in the ’60s?
Creedence Clearwater Revival crashed and burned within a matter of years of finally getting commercial success. Yet their popularity has continued to be in a state of constant revival as the band upholds a spiritual sense of the era they represent. However, Richards was never truly convinced, even when everybody else was singing ‘Proud Mary’ at the top of their lungs.
From the tempestuous end that led to a long-running feud to the visceral vitality of their music, they are an emblem of the American zeitgeist in the 1960s, and that remains a thrilling force to behold.
Further reading: From The Vault
The appeal of their sound was epitomised best by Bruce Springsteen in 1993 when he inducted them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, stating, “Creedence Clearwater Revival … were progressive and anachronistic at the same time. An unapologetic throwback to the golden era of rock ‘n’ roll.”
‘The Boss’ continued, “They broke ranks with their peers on the progressive, psychedelic San Francisco scene. Their approach was basic and uncompromising, holding true to the band members’ working-class origins. I stand here tonight, still envious of that music’s power and its simplicity.”
While most of us have just nodded our heads while reading Springsteen’s analysis of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s greatness, Richards would be shaking his head in disagreement.
In his mind, Richards felt that they were a little too simple. While he was being interviewed in an office in 1969, ol’ Creedence were playing on the stereo system. When asked for his thoughts, he initially said, “Yeah, I’m into a very weird thing with that band,” before his feedback got steadily harsher from thereon.
Initially, Richards was a fan of what he heard from John Fogerty’s pen, explaining, “When I first heard them, I was really knocked out”.
However, that honeymoon period didn’t last long, as he shared, “But I became bored with them very quickly. After a few times, it started to annoy me. They’re so basic and simple that maybe it’s a little too much.”
In some ways, Richards’ analysis played into the unfortunate ‘Boy Scouts of Rock’ tagline that had begun to beset the band at the time. After all, in the very same Rolling Stone interview, Richards laid down the incendiary tenets of his own band, stating: “It’s always been the Stones’ thing to get up on stage and kick the crap out of everything. We had three years of that before we made it, and we were only just getting it together when we became famous. We still had plenty to do on stage, and I think we still have. That’s why the tour should be such a groove for us.”
Taking into account Richards’ love to “kick the crap out of everything”, it made sense that he couldn’t relate to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s contrasting outlook on rock ‘n’ roll. He never thought they were terrible musicians; it’s just anyone who had a softer approach than his own was tediously “basic” in his mind.
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