Keith Richards Reveals the One Band That Made the Rolling Stones Possible
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The Beatles’ Big Influence
Keith Richards, guitarist of The Rolling Stones, says the band wouldn’t have made it without one of the biggest groups in music history. In an interview with writer Hunter S. Thompson, Richards said many people helped the band along the way, but it was The Beatles who had the biggest impact.
“There was very little difference between The Beatles and ourselves,” Richards said. “There would be no Stones without The Beatles. Have to take my hat off to John, he was the strong one. If they hadn’t kicked the door in there wouldn’t be a way through the door.”
Richards didn’t just mean they were influenced musically—he meant The Beatles helped them break into the business. He spoke highly of John Lennon, calling him the “strong one” in the band and credited the Fab Four with opening the door for groups like The Rolling Stones to succeed.
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A Song from a Cab Ride
Paul McCartney once shared the story of how The Beatles gave The Rolling Stones one of their early hits. He and Lennon had written a song that Ringo Starr would later sing, but it ended up helping out their friends instead.
“John and I were walking down Charing Cross Road in London, in the early sixties, and two guys were going past in a taxi and shouted ‘Oi! Oi!’ and it was Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] of The Stones,” McCartney said.
“So we said ‘ey, give us a lift,’ you know, so we bunked into their taxi and Mick was saying ‘oh we’ve got a recording contract, you know, we’re with Decca now.’”
No Feud—Just Respect
McCartney continued: “We said ‘ah great, congratulations,’ because it was a very friendly scene. There’s not a lot of rivalry, actually, you know, it now seems like there was this bitter feud, The Stones were the dirty, you know, horrible longhairs, and we were the cute, real nice guys, but it wasn’t like that at all.”
He explained how both bands were actually quite close: “We were very similar in tastes and in clothes and everything. So Mick said, ‘Have you got a song?’ and I said, ‘Have we got a song? There’s this Ringo song,’ and I knew they were into Bo Diddley, Not Fade Away and stuff like that, we knew they did that stuff.”
“So I said, ‘I know a song, we’ve got this Ringo song off of the album and it’s not going to be a single for us, but maybe you guys could take it.’ So that’s what they did, and it was their first single I think.”
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Jagger on Competition
Even though they respected each other, the bands were still competitive. Mick Jagger told Rolling Stone Magazine’s founder Jann Wenner that the scene was very active with friendly rivalry.
“Super, highly competitive – but friendly,” Jagger said. “Because when you’re very young, it’s very hard. Looking back, thinking of all that competition, I hate it. But I suppose it’s all right, because I won out.”
More Than Just The Beatles
Jagger explained that it wasn’t just between them and The Beatles—it was all over the UK music scene. “But it wasn’t only between us and the Beatles but us and all the other bands,” he added. He recalled a moment when another band, Herman’s Hermits, caused some drama over show placement.
“I remember one time playing in Philadelphia, and Herman’s Hermits were top of the bill, and we were second, and there was some argument about the dressing rooms. [Peter Noone] was complaining because he was top of the bill and his dressing room wasn’t good enough.”
Jagger ended the story with a laugh: “And one of the most impossible things was going out to have a hamburger, and some guy would go, ‘Are you Herman’s Hermits?’ It would kill you. So you go, ‘Fuck you. Herman’s Hermits is shit.’”
