The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were two of the biggest acts of the 1960s. Their success was well-earned. Both bands wrote songs that dominated the charts and have continued to receive playtime even decades after their releases. According to Keith Richards, the reason that either band was able to have such long-lasting success was because they didn’t rely on singles. Richards said that both bands contributed to the demise of a single.
Keith Richards said The Beatles and The Rolling Stones focused on albums, not singles
According to Richards, before the rise of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, many albums were made up of filler.
“We were learning about making the album the center of attention — the form for the music instead of just singles,” he wrote in his memoir Life. “Making an LP usually consisted of having two or three single hits and their B-sides, and then filler. Everything was two minutes twenty-nine seconds for a single, otherwise you wouldn’t get played on the radio. I talked with Paul McCartney about this recently. We changed it: every track was a potential single; there was no filler. And if there was, it was an experiment. We’d use the extended time we had with an album just to make more of a statement. If LPs hadn’t existed, probably The Beatles and ourselves wouldn’t have lasted more than two and a half years.”
He added that by focusing on the album as a whole, they effectively killed the importance of a single.
“The record got bigger — and could anybody listen to that much? It’s over three minutes. Can you keep their attention? Can you keep your audience? But it worked,” he wrote. “The Beatles and ourselves probably made the album the vehicle for recording and hastened the demise of the single. It didn’t go away immediately; you always needed a hit single. It just extended you without your even really knowing it.”
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were successful because of this
Both of these bands enjoyed lasting success because of this approach. Rather than adjusting their music, squashing it into two-and-a-half minutes to get playtime on the radio, they filled their albums with good music. They were freer to experiment, which allowed them to push the boundaries of their music and tell a story with their albums.
Both bands likely would have enjoyed success if they had focused on singles alone. Still, they have enduring legacies among the greatest bands of all time because they focused on putting out strong, whole albums.
The Beatles didn’t include many of their singles on albums
The Beatles released a number of singles, but surprisingly, few of these ended up on their albums. This meant that a number of singles that went to No. 1 didn’t end up on the completed album. While this may seem odd, the band and producer George Martin didn’t want fans to have to pay for singles, then buy them again on an album.