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Rolling Stones Quotes: Keith Richards on the Stones in 1966

“All we wanted was to catch up on everything we hadn’t been able to do. Although we made money we were still living in rented apartments or hotels. Consequently we hadn’t been able to appreciate the position we were in. By ’66 we reached a point where another change was coming. Over the next two years we would get there. We needed to be part of the audience for a while. We just needed to enjoy ourselves and take stock of what was happening. We had lots of personal things to deal with too. Brian was becoming impossible to work with. In every other way he was totally alien to the band. Much of that though was caused by the non-stop work.”

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Rolling Stones: Time to Breathe and Reflect

By 1966, The Rolling Stones had hit a wall—not musically, but personally. Fame had come fast, yet the whirlwind pace left little time to actually feel successful. They were still crashing in rentals or hotels, trying to process the chaos. Something had to give, and change was in the air.

Stepping Back to Move Forward

Keith Richards later reflected on that period as a moment of reckoning. “We just needed to enjoy ourselves and take stock of what was happening,” he admitted. It wasn’t just about the music—it was about reconnecting with themselves and their audience. They needed to pause, to live a little, and to find clarity after years of constant touring and recording.

But it wasn’t all introspection. Internally, the band was shifting. Brian Jones, once a driving force, was growing more distant and harder to work with. “He was totally alien to the band,” Richards recalled. The relentless pace of the band’s schedule only amplified these cracks. What had once been creative friction was now something far more difficult.

That two-year stretch following ’66 became a transitional phase—a regrouping of sorts. The Stones weren’t falling apart; they were learning how to evolve. And evolution meant dealing with personal baggage, facing uncomfortable truths, and figuring out how to stay not just relevant, but real.

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