Keith Richards's Rare Lead Solos vs. Mick Taylor's Fluid Runs — and Why Open G Made 'Start Me Up' a Monster

The most interesting thing about Keith Richards’s solo on “You Got the Silver” (1969) isn’t that he played lead — it’s that he sounds like a rhythm guitarist trying to be a lead guitarist. The solo is choppy, bent around open strings, and stays inside a tight pentatonic box. Compare that to Mick Taylor, who joined the band the same year and immediately laid down fluid, legato runs on “Love in Vain” and “Sway” — notes spill out of his fingers like whiskey from a bottle. Richards’s lead work is architectural; Taylor’s is atmospheric.

Richards’s open G tuning (with the low E string removed) changed the entire physics of Rolling Stones riffs. By tuning G, D, G, B, D, he could barre the top strings with one finger and let the open G drone underneath. “Start Me Up” started as a reggae jam in 1975 but was resurrected three years later when Richards realized that the repeating five-note riff, played entirely on the second, third, and fourth strings in open G, created a tension that no standard tuning could