Keith Richards Trashes Grateful Dead, Too, But Won’t Diss Taylor Swift

Keith Richards Trashes Grateful Dead, Too, But Won’t Diss Taylor Swift

Keith Richards’ troll game is without peer. You can’t stop him, you can only hope to contain him. And you can’t contain him! Last week, he did an interview in which he dismissed both the entirety of rap music and the two most important metal bands of all time. One interview! Today, he did another, this one a Billboard cover story, and once again he’s spitting out gold like a broken slot machine. There’s some drug talk, natch, some jabs at Mick, as per usual, some criticism of Donald Trump and race relations in America, as you gotta do in any Q&A in 2015. And then he gets to music.

Here are the gems:

When [asked] if The Grateful Dead’s three farewell shows during July 4 weekend, which grossed an astonishing $55 million, fired up [Richards’] competitive juices, the answer is apparently yes, though not because of anything to do with money. “The Grateful Dead is where everybody got it wrong,” he scoffs. “Just poodling about for hours and hours. Jerry Garcia, boring shit, man. Sorry, Jerry.”

Not a totally unwarranted take. As the old joke goes:

Q: What did the Deadhead say when he ran out of drugs?

A: Man this music sucks.

But when Keef gets to contemporary stuff, it’s straight madness. Look at this:

[T]hough [Richards] makes exceptions for Florence Welch (whose last name escapes him at lunch) and Ed Sheeran (who opened for the Stones in June), he can’t tolerate most contemporary music. When I try to draw him out on Taylor Swift, he stops himself. “Oh, I don’t want to sound like an old man,” he says, harrumphing loudly before dissolving in laughter.

What do you even say to that? Here’s the crazy thing: You could read that as him subtweeting Taylor Swift or him big-upping Taylor Swift or him just living in fear of Taylor Swift, and in every case, it’s unsatisfying and a little frustrating. And that doesn’t even take into account his endorsement of Ed fucking Sheeran! It’s not even beef, really, just peak troll from the master. God love him.

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