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Why Keith Richards Hates Sgt. Pepper’s

Keith Richards. Photo: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images

Keith Richards, the Rolling Stones’ unstoppable icon of sexual, six-stringed, blues-rock racket, has made no secret of his disdain for the Beatles’ experimental music, specifically Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Speaking with Esquire, the guitarist said:

“…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.’â€

While a lot of people would disagree with Richards’s assessment, it’s funny that he likens Sgt. Pepper’s to Their Satanic Majesties, the Stones’ album that came out a few months after Sgt. Pepper’s, and which Richards himself has called “a load of crap.â€

Why Keith Richards Hates Sgt. Pepper’s