![\"Keith](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Keith-Richards-The-Rolling-Stones-London-2022-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Raph Pour-Hashemi)<\/p>\n
Tue 9 September 2025 19:15, UK <\/p>\n
Among the original British invasion\u2019s first wave, Keith Richards<\/a> always felt connected to America\u2019s musical foundations on the deepest level.<\/p>\n The US songbook of the 1950s inspired the whole cohort who first broke the States early in the decade. The Beatles and The Kinks had all been struck by rock and roll\u2019s lightning bolt as teens, cutting their teeth live and smattering their early records with covers from the likes of Chuck Berry or The Isley Brothers.<\/p>\n The Rolling Stones, however, harnessed the soul of the blues and R&B with an authenticity far beyond their years. Such love was a joint effort. While the band\u2019s founder and initial chief Brian Jones was the blues purist, frontman Mick Jagger and Richards were lost in the early records from Howlin\u2019 Wolf and Muddy Waters\u2014indeed, the later Glimmer Twins sparked their adult friendship when Richards spotted his old primary school friend Jagger with the Chicago blues pioneer\u2019s record tucked under his arm back in 1961.<\/p>\n While not The Stones\u2019 birth as the blue plaque erroneously suggests on Dartford Station\u2019s platform two, rock history was certainly forged as the two hit it off over a love of blues and rock and roll. Before long, The Beatles would turn America on its head with their 1964 debut on The Ed Sullivan Show<\/a>, the UK would conquer the Billboard charts, and the British Invasion would prove instrumental in scoring the decade\u2019s tumultuous counterculture into the 1970s. The Stones were essential in paving that path.<\/p>\n During their golden album run from 1968\u2019s Beggars Banquet, The Stones mined the rich American tradition of country and blues, finally in their roots rock element after a brief wobble dallying with psychedelia for 1967\u2019s Their Satanic Majesties Request. As the 1970s rolled along, the tussle between Jagger\u2019s ear to the ground to pop\u2019s evolving trends and Richards\u2019 earthy veneration for music\u2019s bedrock DNA would form an essential creative tug of war between the old comrades, as well as exacerbate growing tensions into the 1980s.<\/p>\n Such a connection with America\u2019s boogie rock traditions created a sincere fandom for Texan hard rockers ZZ Top. Having opened for The Stones at odd points over the years, Billy Gibbons\u2019 rustic and rural guitar style, wrapped together ZZ Top\u2019s uniquely Southern sense of humour, had earned major stripes from The Stones\u2019 riff conjurer, resulting in Richards enthusiastically inducting the \u2018La Grange\u2019 trio to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004: \u201cThis is the heartbeat of the whole country of the rock and roll. This is roots, these cats know they\u2019re blues and they know how to dress it up.\u201d<\/p>\n