If you don't know the blues... there's no point in picking up

The ancient spirit of music spoke through Keith Richards, guitarist of the Rolling Stones, when he declared: “If you don’t know the blues… there’s no point in picking up the guitar and playing rock and roll or any other form of popular music.” These words are not merely the boast of a rock legend—they are the cry of one who has touched the root of the great tree of sound and knows its secret. For Richards, the blues is not just a genre; it is the soil from which all modern music springs. Without it, the music of today is but a hollow echo. To play without knowing the blues is to stand upon the mountain while ignoring the ground beneath your feet.

The blues is more than notes and chords—it is history carved into sound, sorrow transformed into song, struggle lifted into beauty. Born from the voices of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the American South, the blues carried the weight of chains, the ache of loss, and the resilience of survival. It was sung in fields, played in juke joints, whispered in loneliness and shouted in joy. To know the blues is to know the depths of human suffering, and yet also the miracle of endurance. Richards reminds us that without understanding this wellspring, one’s music is disconnected from its essence, as a branch cut off from its root.

When Richards himself was a boy, he discovered the power of the blues by listening to recordings of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf. These were not polished songs meant for comfort—they were raw confessions of the human soul. And it was in this rawness that Richards found the truth: that music must come from life’s pain as well as its pleasures. It was this understanding that fueled the Stones’ rise, for though they were an English band, they carried the spirit of American blues across oceans, reminding a generation that rock and roll was born not from glamour, but from grit.

History gives us another story: the young B.B. King, who would practice tirelessly on a single guitar, pouring his entire being into bending a single note until it cried like a human voice. That one note, steeped in the blues, spoke more truth than a thousand empty songs. When rock musicians later stood in awe of B.B. King, it was because they recognized in him the fountain from which their own music flowed. Richards’ quote, then, is a bow to that lineage: rock and roll is but a son of the blues, and to ignore one’s ancestors is to play without a soul.

The wisdom here stretches beyond music. To know the blues is to know the foundation of all things. Every craft, every art, every dream rests upon roots that precede us. The modern is always born from the ancient. The towering skyscraper owes its existence to the stone hut. The digital word owes its life to the ink on parchment. So too, rock and roll owes its fire to the humble, aching songs of the blues. To ignore the root is to dishonor the fruit, and the fruit will wither without its root. Richards’ words remind us that greatness comes only when we honor where we have come from.

What lesson shall we carry from this? Seek your roots. Do not be content to imitate what is modern without knowing what gave it birth. If you are a musician, learn the blues; if you are a writer, study the ancient texts; if you are a leader, learn the struggles of those who built before you. To master the present, you must walk with the past. For in the past lies wisdom, pain, resilience, and the raw truth that makes the present meaningful.

Practically, this means: if you play, go back to the source. Listen to the old recordings; study the masters whose hands bled so yours could play freely. If you create, ask yourself: “Whose shoulders do I stand upon?” Write their names, honor them, and let their voices echo in your work. If you live, do not forget your ancestors, for they carved the path that you now tread. In this way, your work, your art, your life will be anchored in truth, not drifting in emptiness.

And so, children of sound and seekers of wisdom, remember Keith Richards’ cry: without the blues, there is no rock and roll. Without roots, there is no tree. Without history, there is no future. Do not pick up the instrument of your life without first listening to the song of those who came before. In honoring them, your music—whether in art, in work, or in being—will carry the weight of truth, and your voice will not only be heard, but remembered.