{"id":649036,"date":"2026-06-20T14:03:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T14:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/649036\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T14:03:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T14:03:13","slug":"the-only-guitarist-who-consistently-amazed-keith-richards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/649036\/","title":{"rendered":"The only guitarist who consistently amazed Keith Richards"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Keith<\/p>\n

Credit: Bent Rej<\/p>\n

Sat 20 June 2026 9:50, UK <\/p>\n

Despite his unwavering role as one of rock music\u2019s most beloved pirates, Keith Richards<\/a> has never been an easy guitarist to impress. <\/p>\n

Throughout his time working with The Rolling Stones, Richards has been known to tear anyone through the mud that he thought was making music that wasn\u2019t up to his standards. Richards hasn\u2019t ever been a technically gifted player. Instead he focused on feel and attitude to guide his way into the great unknown of rock and roll legacy.<\/p>\n

Richards, therefore, would rarely critique artists who couldn\u2019t find the right notes in the book, but would happily lambast those who couldn\u2019t pick out the right notes in their heart. Although Richards could lay down the law on any unsuspecting musician, he felt that one guitarist stood out among the rest as the greatest in his field.<\/p>\n

When discussing the greatest musicians in Richards\u2019 mind, it all tends to return to the blues. Although he may have loved everything from jazz to R&B in his time, Richards grew up idolising the sounds of old bluesmen that he heard growing up, embracing the sounds of everyone from Muddy Waters to Robert Johnson.<\/p>\n

That love eventually landed Richards the gig in The Rolling Stones, coming into the fold along with Mick Jagger to fill out Brian Jones\u2019 new outfit. Although the band could undoubtedly deliver blues rock better than anyone else on the scene, they quickly became a different entity when Jagger and Richards began writing songs together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Mick<\/a>Credit: Far Out \/ Alamy<\/p>\n

Taking the basis of blues music, Richards started to give birth to the first significant rock guitar riffs, playing songs that lived off of the distorted guitar like \u2018Satisfaction\u2019<\/a> and \u2018Get Off My Cloud\u2019. Once the band started moving in a different direction, though, Jones became disillusioned, thinking that his band was being taken away from him.<\/p>\n

Feeling like he couldn\u2019t contribute to the band\u2019s later material, Jones would find himself out of step with the rest of the band before he was let go in the late 1960s. After Jones\u2019 departure, the band entertained the idea of having another technician behind the fretboard, guitarist Jeff Beck, then known for his unique innovations on guitar.<\/p>\n

While the band went with Mick Taylor instead, Richards always found it inspiring whenever he listened to Beck play. Formerly of The Yardbirds, Beck was known for taking the guitar into different territory, using it as a tool and creating lead lines that sounded closer to a human voice than anything coming out at the time.<\/p>\n

Remembering the influence that Beck had on the guitar community, Richards would count the guitarist among one of the best in his field, telling Guitar World<\/a>, \u201cHe was a tremendous player. The odd times we got together, I was always amazed by the stuff that he did with his tremolo bar. He was one of the best, man\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then again, Beck may have wanted to branch out more than what The Stones had to offer. Although the idea of being in one of the biggest bands in the world may have been a tough decision, the lead work he did on tracks like \u2018Cause We\u2019ve Ended As Lovers\u2019 may have been too outlandish than what the band would have wanted at the time. <\/p>\n

For all of the creative differences that the group may have had, both acts ended up turning in equally strong albums independent from each other. While it\u2019s anyone\u2019s guess as to what a Rolling Stones album would sound like with Beck behind the fretboard, it\u2019s better to have both Exile on Main St and Blow by Blow simultaneously than ponder on what they could have made together.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In many ways, Richards\u2019 admiration for Beck reflects his broader appreciation of originality. While their approaches to the guitar could hardly have been more different, both musicians shared a determination to carve out their own identities. The result was two extraordinary careers that enriched rock music in separate ways, leaving fans with a wealth of classic recordings rather than a fascinating but ultimately hypothetical collaboration.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Bent Rej Sat 20 June 2026 9:50, UK Despite his unwavering role as one of rock music\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649037,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,30322,25721,128,15747,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-649036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-jeff-beck","tag-keith-richards","tag-music","tag-the-rolling-stones","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649036"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649036\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}