Like many successful rock musicians, Bruce Springsteen grew up on a steady diet of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. He spent hours teaching himself a Keith Richards solo when he decided he wanted to be a lead guitarist and dreamed about getting onstage with the band. Years later, he performed a song with them in concert. Springsteen considers the band one of the best in the business, but he believes their catalog is underrated.
Bruce Springsteen said The Rolling Stones have always been better than their competition
In 2012, Springsteen joined The Rolling Stones onstage during a New Jersey concert to perform “Tumbling Dice.” He said that joining the band in rehearsals the day before was thrilling. Not only were they one of his favorite bands, but he thought of them as one of the best of all time.
“The next night we did it for twenty thousand thunderstruck New Jerseyans in Newark,” Springsteen wrote in his book Born to Run. “It was a thrill but it didn’t have the mystic kick of the night before, when I got to sit in, in that little room with just those four guys, the GREATEST GARAGE BAND IN THE WORLD, in my small piece of rock’ n’ roll heaven.”
Springsteen believed that part of the magic of the band was their chemistry and extensive catalog of music. He thought their songbook was underrated despite their success.
“A great group is always about chemistry,” he wrote. “Up close the chemistry amongst these players is unique. Keith’s guitar plays off of Charlie’s drums, creating a swing that puts the roll back into the rock. This is the last of the rock’ n’ roll bands. Combine that with the most underrated songbook in rock history and the Stones have always stood heads above their competition. Still do.”
Can The Rolling Stones really be described as underrated, like Bruce Springsteen said?
The Rolling Stones have been a band for 60 years, play at stadiums across the world, and have won several Grammys. The band is undoubtedly a success, so how can Springsteen think of them as underrated?
Part of this might have to do with when the band rose to prominence. In the early 1960s, their biggest competition was The Beatles. The band was only together for a decade, but they are seen as having a larger cultural footprint. It’s impossible for any band, no matter how talented, to compete.
The Stones have also been described — both by themselves and other artists — as a blues cover band. In their years as a group, they’ve become more than this, but Paul McCartney described them as such as recently as 2021.
While the band might not be underrated in the traditional sense of the word, some view them as a knockoff of the blues and other bands of their era. Because of this, they may not receive as much respect as they deserve.
Keith Richards named the most underrated Rolling Stones album
On some level, Richards agrees with Springsteen. When discussing his favorite Rolling Stones albums, he included one that he believes is underrated.
“Always hard to pick favorites. I would go anywhere between Beggars Banquet, Sticky Fingers, Let It Bleed, Exile on Main St. And I will go also to Bridges to Babylon, which is, I think, much underrated,” he told GQ. “But I mean, that’s when we were hitting our stuff and it was easy because we were working at home, we were still not thrown out of the country and having to duck and dive. So it was easier to work then because we weren’t exiles. But in actual fact, I really hate to pick out favorite things because they’ve all got something on them that is special to me. Quite honestly I love them all, some a little more than others.”
