Keith Richards Said Bob Dylan Doesn’t Have a ‘Particularly Great Voice’ and He’s Right: ‘It’s Almost Anti-Singing’

Keith Richards and Bob Dylan have had their problems in the past, but they appreciated each other musically. Dylan has spoken highly of The Rolling Stones, and Richards acknowledged how influential Dylan was. He said that Dylan changed the world of songwriting and managed to express himself beautifully, all without having a particularly good singing voice.

Keith Richards said Bob Dylan didn’t have a good voice, but an influential one

Richards said that while writing with Mick Jagger, they occasionally decided to go forward with lyrics if it seemed like Paul McCartney and John Lennon would have written something similar.

“The fact that you could get that kind of tasty bite into the lyrics by mixing in contemporary stories or headlines or just what appeared to be mundane daily narrative was so far away from pop music and also from Cole Porter or Hoagy Carmichael,” he wrote in his memoir Life. “‘I saw her today at the reception’ was just very plain. No dynamics, no sense of where it was going. I think Mick and I looked at each other and said, well, if John and Paul can do it .…”

He believed that The Beatles and Dylan pushed songwriting and singing in a new, groundbreaking direction. Dylan, in particular, challenged the audience’s idea of what singing should sound like.

“The Beatles and Bob Dylan to a great extent changed songwriting in that way and people’s attitudes towards voice,” Richards wrote. “Bob has not got a particularly great voice, but it’s expressive and he knows where to put it, and that’s more important than any technical beauties of voice. It’s almost anti-singing. But at the same time what you’re hearing is real.”

Mick Jagger once defended Bob Dylan’s singing voice 

Richards’ bandmate Jagger once shared a similar sentiment about Dylan’s singing voice. After an interviewer insinuated that she found Dylan’s voice unpleasant, Jagger defended it.

“It’s a funny voice, it’s like a voice that’s never been one of the great tenors of our time, but it’s got a timbre, a projection, and it’s got a feeling to it,” he said in the interview. “You were talking earlier about as you get older that your voice takes on a different resonance, different pitch, and so on. So, there’s something to be said for that.”

Both Jagger and Richards are right. Dylan’s vocal range may not impress some, but he does imbue his songs with emotion. It adds weight and rawness to his lyrics; any pain he feels comes through acutely to a listener. His voice whines and grates in a way that makes it both effective and listenable.

In addition, Dylan paved the way for other artists with grit and gravel in their singing voices. While some prefer it, singers no longer need smooth, pristine vocals to be successful.

Keith Richards and Bob Dylan once nearly came to blows

While Richards praised Dylan’s capacity to express emotion with his voice, he and Dylan did not always get along. On a night out together, Dylan told Richards and Brian Jones that his backing band, the Hawks, were better than The Rolling Stones.

“Brian and Keith got totally f***ed up, and Keith suddenly took offense at Dylan’s song ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ and accused Dylan of taking the piss,” Tom Keylock, who worked with both Dylan and the Stones, explained in an interview. “Dylan said, ‘I could have written ‘Satisfaction,’ but no way could you f***ers could have written ‘Mr. Tambourine Man.’ There was an exchange of ‘f*** yous’ between Keith and Dylan. Brian joined in and wanted to thump Dylan down, and the whole scene started to get ugly.”

Luckily, Keylock was able to get Dylan back to his hotel before Richards and Jones attacked him.