(Credits: Far Out / Press)
Tue 26 August 2025 20:45, UK
The Rolling Stones have made feuding an art form.
This habit for internal spats or jabs at other acts is part of their lore. The volatile edge it imbues their music with helps them stand out as free spirits prancing, pouting, and occasionally punching their way into the history books of rock ‘n’ roll.
But it has also set them up for a bit of a bashing from some of their peers from time to time. As the old adage goes, if you’re happy to dish it out, you have to expect some of it to come back to you.
The most common criticism that the classic rock group face is that they are musically limited. Perhaps the hardest-hitting hatchet job on this front came from Roger Daltrey. The Who frontman famously quipped that they could sound like a “mediocore pub band”. Even the ever-friendly Paul McCartney called them a “blues cover band”.
So, they have certainly not been without their detractors over the years, but far fewer folks took a swipe at them when they were in their pomp. However, if you trace the trend of the Stones being on the receiving end of insults right back to the start, you may well find Ritchie Blackmore as the progenitor of the putdowns.
The Deep Purple guitarist had struck up somewhat of a budding friendship with Mick Jagger in the early 1970s. But it wasn’t just chatting over drinks in London’s famed Speakeasy Club that warmed the ‘Gimme Shelter’ singer to Blackmore, he also began waxing lyrical in the press about how he was the finest guitarist that this whole country had to offer.
He was sorely mistaken if he expected the same sort of endorsement from Blackmore in return. “All the big groups knew and raved about me. We played with the Stones once and Mick Jagger said in an interview that I was the best guitarist he’d ever seen. The next I slagged the Stones in print and that was the end of that friendship. Still, I was well respected, from top to bottom,” the Deep Purple guitarist told Cameron Crowe.
That swiftly ended their friendship and he’s continued to slag the Stones off ever since. Three years on from his initial cutting critique, he told The Trouser Press, “The Stones? I considered them idiots. It was just a nick from Chuck Berry riffs. Chuck Berry was OK. Sometimes I’m outspoken, but I don’t have any time for the Stones.”
“Idiots” is rather unequivocal considering Jagger was once so kind about his playing, but Blackmore has never bowed down to anybody. So, as the singer has learnt over the years, you have to pick your friends just as carefully as you pick your fights.
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