George Harrison’s opinion on Keith Richards

Besides being the most underrated songwriter in The Beatles, George Harrison was also an incredible guitar player who was fundamental to the band’s sound. He inspired countless guitarists around the world, many of whom, like him, became influential and carved their names in Rock history. Unlike his bandmate Paul McCartney, who gave thousands of interviews during his career, George didn’t talk to the press that much and spoke even less about other artists. However, he did share his opinions on some of them, including The Rolling Stones’ guitarist Keith Richards.

What was George Harrison’s opinion on Keith Richards

George Harrison was called “the quiet Beatle” by the media and fans during his career and he was always modest when it came to talking about his own guitar playing. When asked in an interview about ELO’s Jeff Lynne calling him a “great guitar player” and pointing out that Harrison always played it down when praised, he mentioned Keith Richards as one of the greatest Rock and Roll rhythm guitar players, but also said that the Rolling Stones member was not very good as a lead guitarist.

“I’m not playing it down. I’m just not playing it up! I think Keith (Richards) is one of the best rock ’n’ roll rhythm guitar players. I don’t think he’s very good at lead. But this is what I feel about myself too: What we do is make records, and the records have some good guitar parts on them. I like Keith enormously, I think he’s great, but he’s not Albert or B.B. King. Anyway, the main thing about him is that he has the confidence,” George smiles. “So even if it’s not perfect he doesn’t care,” George Harrison told Musician magazine in 1990.

A few years earlier, George said he liked Keith a lot and that they occasionally sent each other t-shirts. “I haven’t seen Keith for years. He lives, I presume in Jamaica and New York. I haven’t seen him for a long time. (Are you a fan of his playing?) “Yeah, I like Keith a lot. We occasionally send t-shirts to each other (laughs),” he said in an interview with MTV‘s Kurt Loder in the late 80s.

The last time George and Keith saw each other

Although George didn’t enjoy touring, he used to go see other bands playing live. The final time George Harrison and Keith Richards saw each other was at a Rolling Stones concert in London. “The last time I saw him was when he came to a Stones gig in London. He came disguised as Farmer George.”

“He was a great horticulturalist. George loved his garden, another sign of a real gent. He came backstage, and he was full of beans then. I just said. ‘How are you doing, healing and shit?’ And he said. ‘Okay,’ you know, he seemed all right. I’m quite happy that I last saw him when he was on an up.”

He continued:

“(…) George reminds me very much of Charlie Watts, in that way and in many ways the understatedness. The modesty and just being a gentleman, really. There’s very few I’d give that word to, and I wouldn’t give it to myself. But he was a gent,” Keith Richards told Rolling Stone in 2001.

During that same conversation, which happened after George’s death at the age of 58, Keith praised his late friend, saying he was a musician who really cared about his songs. To him, songs like “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” “My Sweet Lord,” and “Something” were great examples of that, because, in his words, “George crafted his stuff, very, very carefully and it all had its own feel.”

In his opinion, there are different types of guitar players, like Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, who can play as solo artists, and then there are players like George, who can play with bands and be a team player. “To me, that’s way above being some virtuoso flash artist… George was an artist, but he was also a f* craftsman,” Keith Richards told Rolling Stone.Richards also thought The Beatles’ producer George Martin didn’t ‘serve his guitar sound as well as it could have been done’ in the early days of the band.

Keith thinks George Harrison could easily have been a member of The Rolling Stones

Curiously, Keith recently said that John Lennon and George Harrison were two musicians who would have fitted into The Rolling Stones easily. “I don’t think John Lennon would have had much problem fitting into the Stones, or George, if you can imagine that sort of thing happening.”

“We were the same generation, and we all loved the same music. When we first heard The Beatles, we were relieved that there was some other band in England on the same track that we were on. And within a few months, that track was the main track,” Keith Richards told The Telegraph in 2023.

Those were the two Beatles members who Keith said he spent more time with. He used to go to George’s house in London with Ronnie Wood and Eric Clapton to “play guitar and get stoned. The usual,” he said to USA Today. Their friendship started back in the early 60s, when they have already seen each other playing in the clubs. In fact, it was John Lennon and Paul McCartney who gave The Stones their first hit “I Wanna Be Your Man” (1963). “John was a particular good friend of mine. Stories that cannot be told (laughs). George was a lovely guy, we got Paul (a great songwriter) and Ringo, what a guy, what a steady (beat). They came to see us play. We were playing in a pub, at Station Hotel in Richmond, that was our gig.”

Keith Richards continued:

“It was the only one we really had. Everybody was having a good time. I turn around and there is these four guys in black leather overcoats standing there. This was soon after ‘Love Me Do’. I mean this was really early on and this is early 60s. From then on we’re always good mates. When George’s new single (was ready) we always made sure we didn’t clash because in those days was like every two months you had to have a new single.”

“We would collaborate with each other. So we didn’t go head to head, because otherwise it seemed like ‘you’re either Beatles or Stones’, bullshit. And we are so similar, that’s not true. We all recognized that and it was one of the great things about it. I mean, between the two bands there was never any sense of competition, was cooperation,” Keith Richards said in 2003 answering a fan on his website section “Ask Keith” (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).