News Keith Richards once believed synths would ruin live music
All styles of music are subjective. For everyone who loves the sounds of a loud guitar ringing out of a distorted amplifier, there are always going to be a few people who think that it’s the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard whenever they hear it. Even though Keith Richards was ready to try anything when working with The Rolling Stones, he thought that using processed instruments was bound to bring his music to a halt.
Because when you look at what Keef has been able to do with The Stones, it’s usually all about playing from the gut. As much as they may have been able to translate their music into any kind of style in the late 1960s, it always came back to how they interacted with each other when they were jamming.
Take one of their best songs, ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’. The tune could have reasonably been done in just about three minutes, but the long extended jam at the end is something that could never be replicated, featuring the band making up whatever they could as the tape was rolling and Richards matching Mick Taylor note for note.
Then again, synthesisers and drum machines weren’t just relegated to the cheesy side of 1980s music. As far back as the ‘Summer of Love’, artists were already utilising samples in their music thanks to the Mellotron, including different pieces of sounds to fill out their songs like the flamenco guitar that kicks off ‘The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill’.
Even Mick Jagger wasn’t afraid to put different synthesisers on some of The Stones’ 1980s work. When trying to adapt to the times on albums like Dirty Work, the band traded in many of their signature licks for something that sounds more akin to cheesy lounge music with a bunch of over-padded production in the background.
As far as Richards was concerned, the music business would have been a much better place if synthesisers and backing tracks had never taken over, saying, “They don’t have a lot of time to think about it to realize that a lot of these synthesizing and sampling are dead-end streets. This music is human and natural. You need people who work together, musicians who can play and record together to make it more natural”.
Jagger would even share a sentiment similar to the one in the 1980s when talking about the biggest new bands out at the time. At a time when artists like Frankie Goes to Hollywood were dominating the charts, Jagger thought that they weren’t half as good as they were supposed to be because of how much they used backing tracks whenever they performed live.
Although Jagger and Richards may be the last remaining original Stones touring the world, their solution to fill out the sound is simple: get more people. With Steve Jordan providing the backbeat in place of Charlie Watts, the band has been filled out with different backup singers to create a huge wall of noise whenever they played. It’s natural for most artists to slow down as they get older, but Richards would rather give his all with a guitar in his hand than be locked onto a grid.
