Let’s Get Snarky: Keith Disses Bruce; Jay Jay Disses Keith
Keith Richards, in 1988, told Rolling Stone magazine, “I’ve met Bruce two or three times. We’ve had several good chats, usually at some release party or premiere, and we just end up in the corner talking. He’s a sweet guy, a nice guy. Mind you, I think four-hour shows really are way over the top. To me, a great rock & roll act does twenty minutes.”
“I remember the Paramount,” continues Keith, “where you got the Impressions, Jackie Wilson, Joe Tex, and everybody does just their absolute supreme best shot! A lot of the shows you get these days are very self-indulgent. I don’t think anybody can be enthralling for four hours on stage playing rock & roll.”
And later in the interview: “Bruce? That’s a tough one, because I like the guy. But the music…I don’t know. I’m the toughest taskmaster of all time. I’m going to annoy a lot of people. Bruce? To me, it’s pretentious.”
Twenty-two years later, in Keith’s 2010 Life autobiography, he wrote, in reference to Bruce, “if there was anything better around, he’d be still working the bars of New Jersey.”
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Yet two years after that in 2012, there was Bruce, fulfilling a life-long dream as an avid Stones fan his whole life, wildly rocking his ass off in Newark with the Rolling Stones on “Tumbling Dice.”
Enter Twisted Sister’s Jay Jay French, who told ultimateguitar.com just recently, “Mick Jagger’s vocals actually are as good as ever, if not better. The rest of the band really needs help.”
French also told “Syncin’ Stanley” on the YouTube Channel, “we’re not 20 years old anymore. Most of your heroes are now 70 or close to 80, and they can’t do it.” After explaining the use of how bands use music tapes to bolster the sound within concerts, French says, “this mostly applies to singers, although in a band like the Rolling Stones…Keith and Woody have arthritis and they can barely play. I understand that they use guitar players behind the scenes on nights when they really can’t play.”
Bruce, at 73, just smiles and goes out every night and puts on the best rock’n’roll show of anybody.