If you’re a creative person and you want to passionately pursue your craft but don’t know how to get started, you have likely looked up the advice of the people you admire. The majority of musicians and writers who get asked about how you get started in the industry will likely tell you to “just start,” saying that you won’t be perfect when you begin, but it’s essential to just get going. Keith Richards would give this advice to anyone looking to get started in music.
When the band originally started making music, they predominantly did covers of R&B artists like Muddy Waters. Their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, was adamant that the band needed to write their songs. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards tried but could never get it right, and it wasn’t until Oldham locked them in a room that they eventually put something together.
Was Richards happy with the song? No. But it marked the first track they’d ever written, and so was a huge moment for the band. They finally had a starting point and subsequently had a platform that they could build upon.
“When you start writing, it doesn’t matter where the first one comes from,” he said, “You’ve got to start somewhere, right? So Andrew locked Mick and myself into a kitchen in this horrible little apartment we had. He said, ‘You ain’t comin’ out’, and there was no way out.”
From that moment on, the Rolling Stones managed to develop a good system for songwriting, where they would improvise and capitalise on ideas as a band, but they would also work on things in isolation. They straddled the line between various genres when writing, but they predominantly worked with rock, blues and jazz.
Charlie Watts contributed a great deal to the jazz elements of the Rolling Stones. As Richards noted, he played with a swing in his sticks, which meant standard rock ‘n’ roll had a bounce to it; it’s one of the things that made the Rolling Stones so special.
“I think the fact is that Charlie comes out of the jazz stable originally, which makes him unique in a way,” said Richards, “That’s why he swings; he makes rock and roll swing, which is one of the things you’re supposed to do but many people have forgotten.”
Those jazz elements came into play when Bill Wyman left the Rolling Stones. There had been rumours circulating that Wyman was going to leave for a couple of years before it actually happened, and he blamed the tough touring schedule on his eventual departure. Richards saw the parting as a good thing, as it meant they were able to get a musician on board who leaned more on that jazz sound. It was Miles Davis who played a part in finding the replacement, as Richards decided that any guitarist who could keep up with the greatest jazz musician in the world had a place in the Rolling Stones. Enter: Darryl Jones.
“Well, the fact that Darryl spent five years with Miles Davis certainly didn’t hurt,” said Richards, “Darryl has already gotten fond of saying that the Stones is really a jazz band ‘cause we improvise all the time’. He tells us, ‘You cats do more jazz than some jazz cats I’ve played with’. It takes the new boy to tell me I’m actually playing in a jazz band!”
He continued, “But Darryl’s a smooth player and very fast, and he loves his music. He loves playing with Charlie, too. To me, that’s the whole key, to have a rhythm section that clicks really well together.”
