Keith Richards’ Favorite Chuck Berry Song Is a ‘Not Obviously Chuck Berry’ Tune
After 60 years of making music, Keith Richards and the Rolling Stones have influenced countless musicians, and not just with their tunes. The Stones have faced several challenges over the years, and they’ve overcome them. But before they influenced other bands, Richards and the Rolling Stones found inspiration from American blues and rock artists, and Chuck Berry was a big one. Richards’ favorite Berry song is not one most people would think of when they hear his name, though.
The Rolling Stones found inspiration in American blues and rock musicians such as Chuck Berry
Like many English bands that formed in the early 1960s, the Rolling Stones listened to rock music from America, synthesized it, and twisted it into something different. The Stones never hid their influences.
On their first album, 1962’s England’s Newest Hit Makers, the Stones covered Buddy Holly, Willie Dixon, and Chuck Berry, among others. They covered Berry’s “Carol” on that album, then remade “Around and Around” and “You Can’t Catch Me.” They didn’t cover it, but a Berry song inspired “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which is one of the Rolling Stones’ biggest hits.
Yet Richards’ favorite Chuck Berry song is not one of the original rock ‘n’ rollers biggest hits.
Keith Richards’ favorite Chuck Berry song is a ‘not obviously Chuck Berry’ tune
Berry penned classic rock hits such as “Johnny B. Goode,” “You Never Can Tell,” and “No Particular Place to Go.” That’s just a small sample of Berry’s tunes that helped shape rock ‘n’ roll as we know it.
Yet Richards’ favorite Berry song isn’t one of his signature tunes. Instead, it’s the slowed-down blues of “Wee Wee Hours,” a song in which piano takes center stage. Richards chose a handful of essential tracks for the BBC radio program Desert Island Discs, and he explained why “Wee Wee Hours” is his favorite Berry song (per Far Out):
“‘Wee Wee Hours’ [by] Chuck Berry, first off a great inspiration to me, and I thought also that I would like to hear something that is not obviously Chuck Berry, to be surprised. And it’s always surprised me, this track, such a supple blues, almost Nat King Cole in style with the brilliant piano of Johnny Johnson.”
Keith Richards on his favorite Chuck Berry song
“Wee Wee Hours” might not be one of Berry’s many signature songs. And it might not bring to mind Richards’ most famous Rolling Stones licks. Still, it’s not hard to listen to the song and hear throughlines to the Stones. You can almost trace the prominent piano and blues lick in “Wee Wee Hours” forward to two Stones hits — “Angie” and “Honky Tonk Woman.”
Richards’ favorite Berry song might seem obscure, but it’s not hard to hear the influence that song had on the Stones’ music.
What other songs does Keith Richards love?
Richards’ favorite Chuck Berry song isn’t one of the hits, but it has a thread to the Rolling Stones. So do many of his other essential songs.
According to NME, Richards named country legend Hank Williams’ “You Win Again,” Freddie Scott’s soulful “Are You Lonely For Me,” Etta James “Sugar on the Floor,” and Little Walter’s blues classic “Key to the Highway” as essential songs during his Desert Island Discs appearance.
Richards’ waxes poetic about his favorite Chuck Berry song, but he doesn’t have the same reverence for his own work. He once said another artist did a better version of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which is one of the Rolling Stones’ signature songs. And he and Mick Jagger both dismissed Their Satanic Majesties Request as total garbage.
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