The 2 musicians Keith Richards said can’t be covered

Keith Richards is one of the most influential guitarists of all time and The Rolling Stones’ music was an inspiration for countless musicians who started by covering their songs and then went on to write their own material. That is usually how artists begin and evolve to the point where they become a reference for younger generations with the albums they write and record.

The Stones and Richards were inspired by many American Blues and Rock artists, and the guitarist has always praised them. Over the decades, Keith has talked about many of his heroes and once mentioned two American musicians who, in his opinion, cannot be covered, because no one could sound as good as they did on the songs they recorded.

The 2 musicians Keith Richards said can’t be covered

Buddy Holly

“(When listening to) Elvis and Chuck Berry, (I realized) ‘Hey, this ain’t no one man show. (These are) guys, this is a band! I’m listening to bands playing together, I’m listening to guys that know how to play with each other. These are connections between the drums, between the bass, between the guitar, between the voice. This is where it’s at. Without intellectualizing about it, I realize now that ‘Hey, it’s the way that these guys are playing together that is interesting. Especially listening to Buddy Holly and The Crickets, hey, this is the template mate.”

“Ask Paul McCartney, ask John Lennon if you could. He (Buddy) is a cat that writes them, plays them, produces, sings them. In other words (does) the whole package in one. Yet, I don’t know anybody that’s yet dare to try to seriously cover ‘Peggy Sue’, even now. Some people do it on stage,” Keith Richards said in an interview with Guitar Moves in 2015 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Although Keith said Buddy is almost impossible to cover, The Rolling Stones did record a version of his song “Not Fade Away”. It was released as a single by the British band in 1964, seven years after it had originally been released by the American artist. It was their first major hit in the United Kingdom and became the A-side of the band’s first American single.

Keith said Buddy was a genius

He holds Buddy in the highest regard and considers him one of the most important Rock artists of all time. When asked who the five geniuses of Rock and Roll were, he mentioned him as one of them. “It’s really easy to spot them, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, there’s five for start. There are a couple more, they are the seminal pieces,” he told Howard Stern in 2023.

As Keith said in his autobiography “Life” he didn’t have the chance to see Buddy Holly playing live. “I just used to read the magazines, like New Musical Express: ‘Eddie Cochran appearing with Buddy Holly.’ Wow, when I grow up I’ll get a ticket. Of course they all croaked before then,” he said. Buddy Holly was seven years older than Keith Richards, so when he tragically died in a plane crash in 1959 at the age of 22, the British musician was only 15.

Eddie Cochran

“Eddie Cochran ‘C’Mon Everybody’, ‘Summertime Blues’, ‘Somethin’ Else’, nobody is gonna touch this stuff with a stick, because you can’t get near it. Even now you can’t get near it. (Eddie and Buddy) were part of our turn on. But we (Stones) realized that whoever, Elvis, Buddy and Eddie were listening to were some other cats. We found that they were people like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters. (We listened to them) to find out where these cats had got it from. Because we knew nothing came out of a vacuum. Then I realized, when I finally met Muddy and we talked, (he said) ‘Robert Johnson’, that’s the cat!”

“Then I realized that I reached a sort of pinnacle of where I wanted to know where these guys are coming from. Because there (were) weird things going on, like World War II, there were no records being made at all. All the vinyl is going into rubber tires for the bombers and for war related material.”

Keith Richards continued:

“So at the end of World War II, you have all of these cats that have not made a record at least for four or five years. They’ve been playing, they’ve been working throughout the war. That’s why you’ve got this incredible burst in 1946, 1947, 1948 of this incredible black music,” Keith Richards said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

The guitarist has said that artists like Eddie Cochran started a real musical and cultural revolution. Something that, according to him, continued to evolve afterwards as new important bands emerged. Like Buddy Holly, Cochran also tragically died at an early age. He passed away in a car crash in England back in 1960 at the age of 21. He had the chance to release only one complete album during his career: “Singin’ To My Baby’. Keith Richards was part of Eddie Cochran’s new documentary “Don’t Forget Me” (2026)