Keith Richards: Sgt. Pepper Was 'Mishmash of Rubbish'

Surviving members of the Beatles, you now have beef with the Rolling Stones—or at least with Keith Richards, who disses 1967's landmark Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in an interview with Esquire.

• "The Beatles sounded great when they were the Beatles," he says. "But there's not a lot of roots in that music. I think they got carried away. Why not? If you're the Beatles in the '60s, you just get carried away—you forget what it is you wanted to do. You're starting to do Sgt. Pepper. Some people think it's a genius album, but I think it's a mishmash of rubbish."

But as Alex McCown at the AV Club notes, Richards also "turns on his own band," saying Sgt. Pepper was much like Their Satanic Majesties Request, which the Stones released later that same year in a move the guitarist describes as: "Oh, if you can make a load of shit, so can we." Click for the full interview, in which Richards, who has a new solo album out, claims to be only the second-best guitarist living in Weston, Connecticut. (More Keith Richards stories.)