The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards is notorious for his razor-sharp tongue, a trait that has often landed him in hot water over the years. In hindsight, many of his remarks have not aged well. Throughout his career, Richards has taken aim at some of the biggest bands of the time, with Oasis being one of his notable targets. However, his criticisms haven’t stopped there—Metallica and even the entirety of hip-hop have also felt the sting of his biting commentary.

Hindsight is 20/20, but Richards has a penchant for letting his words run away with him. The Band, Bee Gees, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and David Bowie are all mainstream acts that the riff master has lambasted. The guitarist has picked out some terrible takes in his years, but one seems to be more absurd than others. 

Stepping back into the archives of rock and roll, we find Richards speaking in the 1980s about Prince and being particularly vicious. These words certainly fall into the questionable category of offensive, as the guitarist made sure to leave no uncertainty surrounding his opinion on ‘The Purple One.’

Prince’s influence on music since his 1978 debut is indisputable. His career is not only filled with chart-topping hits and critical acclaim but also admiration from countless fellow musicians. It’s a career so rich and diverse that it even led to the pop icon opening for The Rolling Stones during a major string of tour dates. However, it may have been that very incident that landed the enigmatic artist in Richards’ little black book of targets.

That incident came when Mick Jagger personally invited Prince to open up for The Rolling Stones for a pair of shows at The LA Coliseum in October 1981, high-profile concerts which managed to amass over 90,000 people in the crowd for each show. For the first gig on October 9th, Prince was joined by his band, who were soon to be named ‘The Revolution’, and they took the stage before fellow openers George Thorogood and The Destroyers and the J Geils Band.

Portions of the crowd were already on Prince’s back before he had even started playing; his gender-defying outfit made up of a see-through jacket, thigh-high boots, and black bikini briefs didn’t go down well with the audience, it would seem, as they rejected the innovator before he even made his way to the microphone. It was safe to say that ‘His Royal Badness’ already unfairly angered many regressive thinkers in the crowd.

Prince was understandably upset by the hostile reception from the crowd, and after leaving the stage, he was reportedly in tears in his dressing room, swearing he wouldn’t return for the second show two days later. The musician was so distraught that he flew home to Minnesota, leaving his band behind in Los Angeles. However, thanks to Jagger’s persuasive efforts, Prince eventually reconsidered and returned for the follow-up performance.

Heading back out, Prince was yet again booed during his second set and likely suffered a hefty blow to his seemingly undefeatable confidence. However, having been hardened by the previous incident, he had come to terms with the idea that people were unwilling to give his bombastic music a chance because of his choice of outfit. In a snipe at the crowd, he closed on ‘Why You Wanna Treat Me So Bad?’ and allegedly later described the crowd as “tasteless in music and mentally retarded”.

Those comments about the Stones crowd upset Richards despite the said audience racially abusing Prince, which gave him every right to make disparaging comments towards the audience who, after yelling such things, deserved everything they got after their animalistic behaviour.

“An overrated midget, Prince has to find out what it means to be a prince. That’s the trouble with conferring a title on yourself before you’ve proved it,” Richards cruelly said shortly after the event. “His attitude when he opened for us was insulting to our audience. You don’t try to knock off the headline like that when you’re playing a Stones crowd. He’s a prince who thinks he’s a king already. Good luck to him,” he then added.

Then, eight years later, Richards went one step further when he spoke to the Los Angeles Times. “To me, Prince is like The Monkees,” the guitarist said. “I think he’s very clever at manipulating the music business and the entertainment business.” Considering Richards’ position with his band as one of the ultimate rock bands, built out of entertainment rather than enforced technique, this is somewhat laughable.

“I think he’s more into that than making music,” he said regarding what he perceived as Prince playing the game. “I don’t see much substance in anything he does.” He then labelled him a “Pee-wee Herman trip”.

Following Prince’s death in 2016, however, Richards put their past differences behind him and wrote a heartfelt tribute to the late artist: “A unique talent. A true original. So sad, so sudden and, I will add, a great guitar player. We are all going to miss him,” the Stones guitarist wrote on social media.

The whole incident is one which paints Richards in a poor light, but judging by his tribute, the guitarist obviously had a tremendous amount of respect for Prince, and a lot of these barbs may have just been him doing what he accused the musician of — playing the game.

Keith RichardsPrinceThe Rolling Stones