In a recent interview with Esquire, The Rolling Stones‘ Keith Richards talks about lessons learnt on the road, his admiration for Blues music, as well as the release of his upcoming solo album and the premiere of a Netflix documentary fittingly entitled, Keith Richards: Under the Influence. However, one of the surprises of the interview was Richards’ remarks in regards to The Beatles epic Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album: 

…the 
Beatles sounded great when they were the Beatles. But there’s not a lot of roots in that music. I think they got carried away. Why not? If you’re the Beatles in the ’60s, you just get carried away—you forget what it is you wanted to do. You’re starting to do Sgt. Pepper. Some people think it’s a genius album, but I think it’s a mishmash of rubbish, kind of like Satanic Majesties—”Oh, if you can make a load of shit, so can we.” 

Listen To Keith Richards’ First Single In Over 20 Years, ‘Trouble’

Richards also goes on to talk about how “primal” and “sexual” their appeal was from the beginning, about how the fans (a lot of young girls) would drown out the amplification of the music:

Especially in those days—there were no PAs. And 3,000 screaming chicks could just wail you out of the whole place. Just looking at the crowd, you could see them dragging the chicks out, sweating, screaming, convulsing. Astonishing, even at that age. At the same time, a whole roomful of chicks yelling at you is not so shabby, either. Because the year before, nobody would look at you. But they talk about us—the Beatles, those chicks wore those guys out. They stopped touring in 1966—they were done already. They were ready to go to India and shit.

The interview ends on an up tick, with Richards emphasizing how fortunate he has been to live his dreams:

Yeah, it’s been worth the price. To become a musician, that was the dream—just to get into a band. You didn’t care if you were stuck in the back strumming away. You know, I would have gladly done that. I wouldn’t have minded being a sideman, but things turned out another way. Maybe it was the haircut or something.