(Credits: Far Out / Marcel Antonisse / Anefo)
Mon 20 October 2025 10:00, UK
For all the great music Elton John has given the world, he has also given more than a few zingers along the way.
As much as fans might like to simply listen to ‘Candle in the Wind’ and be perfectly happy, it takes a special skill to see him take any no-name pop star to task or defend himself against rock royalty. He’s never been afraid to put his opinion out there, but rarely has it been able to rile up as much pettiness as it did when working alongside The Rolling Stones.
Because if you think about it, John was always an avid fan of all flavours of British rock and roll. Elvis Presley may have set his world on fire, but there was bound to be a new sense of excitement hearing bands like The Beatles and The Stones playing on the radio. But listening to John’s musical specifically, it’s much easier to hear the Fab Four in it than it is to hear The Stones.
His strength was always in making great melodies, and while the occasional tune like ‘Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting’ could have been pumped out by Mick Jagger and co, it wasn’t like he was ever trying to compete with them by any stretch. Even if he were trying to be in competition with the rock legends, there aren’t many writers who can compete with Keith Richards and live to see another day.
From the early 1960s onward, Keef embodied everything great about the electric guitar, and while he was equally as emotionally dangerous with an acoustic in his hands, it was a lot better for him to crank out whatever riff flowed out of him on any given day. But while he and John did trade a few barbs every now and again, the real blood-boiling began when John started to jam with the group during one of their shows.
Then again, John is one of the few artists who can thrive in any onstage situation. Anyone would have been shaking in their boots if they managed to welcome John Lennon for the first time, but since he passed through that with flying colours, you’d think that The Stones would be a walk in the park. Their entire premise was about jamming when they got onstage, but there was such a thing as having a little too much fun live.
But this was also the 1970s version of John, which meant that the drugs were doing more talking than he was, saying, “I decided it was going so well, I’d stay on and jam along to the rest of their set, without first taking the precaution of asking The Stones if they wanted an auxiliary keyboard player. For a while, I thought Keith Richards kept staring at me because he was awestruck by the brilliance of my improvised contributions to their oeuvre. After a few songs, it finally penetrated my brain that the expression on his face wasn’t really suggestive of profound musical appreciation.”
And it’s not like Richards didn’t have a good reason for being mad. Getting a legend onstage for a cameo is always an exciting moment during any show, but it’s a different situation when someone openly invites themselves onstage and then threatens to start turning your show into their show with your band as the special guest.
Although John did have a few cheap shots aimed at Richards for being “a monkey with arthritis”, it’s not like the feud is too serious. Both of them have more than earned their spot as legends of rock and roll, so even if they had gone down the road of diss tracks, the real winners would have been the audience getting multiple hits for the price of one.
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