Different rock bands have different ideas about what genre stars should be touting. Some rockers are understated, putting music above all else. Others like a bit of glitz and glam, even with an edgy spin. You can see this divide among different generations of rock stars. Musicians from, say, the 1960s wouldn’t have approached artistry the same way as someone from the 1980s, MTV and all. Keith Richards once highlighted that particular generational divide by calling out some of his younger counterparts for “posing” too much.
The Younger Band Keith Richards Thought Did “Too Much Posing” For Their Own Good
The 1980s saw a different breed of rockstar come onto the scene. Suddenly, what your musicians looked like mattered more than ever. Rock stars have always had a look about them, but from a business perspective, the optics became increasingly important. Guns N’ Roses were among the groups that played into that shift.
From the beginning of their career, this band had a distinct aesthetic. They were the grungy, gritty counterparts of many in the glam metal scene. But even a more grounded aesthetic denotes a certain amount of care about your image. Richards once denounced that approach, using Guns N’ Roses as an example.
“Not much. I admire the fact that they’ve made it despite certain resistance from the radio bit,” Richards once said about this band. “I admire their guts.”
“But too much posing,” he added. “Their look…it’s like there’s one out of this band, one looks like Jimmy, one looks like Ronnie. Too much copycat, too much posing for me. I haven’t listened to a whole album to be able to talk about the music…I’m a very hard taskmaster. I know that everybody’s gonna say, ‘Oh, he’s putting everybody down.’”
That cutting remark likely meant a lot to Guns N’ Roses, especially Slash, who looked up to the Stones as a source of inspiration. But Richards eventually came around to the idea of this band. As image became an increasingly important part of rockstardom, you couldn’t really fault Guns N’ Roses for keeping with the times. Richards even saved the band from an untimely breakup once, delaying their falling out a little bit.
Each era of rock brings a new rulebook for the edgiest rockers. What slid in the 1960s no longer cut it in the 1980s. Generations of artists will always have growing pains, but the important thing is that rock stays alive, no matter what it looks like in practice.
(Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for UMG)
The post The Legendary Band Keith Richards Refused To Take Seriously: “Too Much Posing” appeared first on American Songwriter.