Many fans consider Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to be the strongest album by The Beatles. Keith Richards is definitely not one of those people. In a new interview, The Rolling Stones guitarist trashes the 1967 record, describing it as a “mishmash of rubbish.”
“The Beatles sounded great when they were Thhe Beatles,” he told Esquire. “But there’s not a lot of roots in that music.” Richards — who is gearing up to release CROSSEYED HEART, his first solo album in 23 years — explained, using the Stones’ own Their Satanic Majesties Request LP as reference:
“I think they [The Beatles] got carried away. Why not? If you’re the Beatles in the Sixties, 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.'”
Elsewhere in the interview, Richards talks about how The Beatles’ wild fanbase — perhaps even wilder than the Stones’ own devoted listeners — “wore” the Liverpool group down, as well as recalls some of his biggest collaborations. Read the full piece here.
