News The Robert Plant album that finally made sense to Keith Richards
To be a music fan, and a good one, you have to be open. I think the only way to truly engage with the vast and ever-growing world of music is to allow your opinions not to be so rigid. Stubborn listeners with strict rules of hating pop or hating jazz or holding onto a dislike of certain acts miss out on greatness by being unwilling to explore or revisit. Even the staunchest of music opinions could turn out wrong or prove to be limiting. That’s a fact that Keith Richards knows well.
Besides being the guitarist in The Rolling Stones and perhaps the father of modern rock as we know it, Richards also fancies himself a critic. Honestly, I’d offer him up my job based on comedic value alone. Throughout his career, his one-liner take-downs of his peers have provided no end of laughs and famous feuds. He called Springsteen “contrived”, said Prince was “an overrated midget”, and declared Sex Pistols “shit” amidst a years-long sparring match, with each band telling the other to pack it in.
Some of his opinions, however, have been more lowball as he’s even gone after some of the biggest names in musical history and the band that could perhaps rival the Stones as the leading lights of their breakout era. The Who got it pretty bad, with Richards lumping them in with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath as he doubted their authenticity and said, “They’re thrown together and you always feel it. You can always see the join.”
The line was that Keef hated Led Zep. It’s a classic case of an artist just grating on you. Largely baseless and almost impossible to explain, everyone has those acts they just can’t get on with for some reason. For me, it’s Blur, as I cast Damon Albarn as my imaginary enemy for no reason other than he seems annoying. I have friends who have done the exact same thing with the Stones themselves, unable to get on board with the faux Americana by the British boys. For Richards, it’s Robert Plant and his band. “The guy’s voice started to get on my nerves. I don’t know why; maybe he’s a little too acrobatic,” he said in the well-known line that so often casts an artist off into the realms of hatred forever.
He said that in 1969. In 1977, he slagged off their songwriting. In 2008, he called them “thrown together” as the dislike for Plant endured for decades. It seemed set to last a lifetime until Keith proved once and for all that he’s a real music fan, offering the artist a second chance.
“I think (Robert Plant is) doing better stuff now — he did that that thing with (Alison Krauss),” he said in 2015. It was likely Raising Sand that he listened to, the pair’s 2008 collaboration, as the duets kept Plant’s wailing voice in check to Richards’ gratitude. 46 years on from his initial takedown of the artist, Richards seemed to revisit the artist with the open mind that any good music fan should have. Proving the importance of checking in on your opinions occasionally, he was surprised by what he found. “I heard that and thought, Finally, he’s getting his chops!” he declared.
While it might still be a middling review, and it doesn’t seem like he’s ever revisited and reconfigured his view on Led Zepplin, Richards’ reconsideration of Plant leads by example. A stubborn mind never does anyone ever good. Those bull-headed beliefs will make you miss out.
