Keith Richards News

Talk all the smack you want about Keith Richards and coconut trees. Just don't bring his musical prowess into the mix.

The Rolling Stones guitarist has lashed out at two Swedish newspapers that printed scathing, sobriety-challenging reviews of the group's Aug. 3 concert date, demanding an apology not only for the band but for the people of Sweden who were duped into believing the gig was worth missing.

The Swedish tabloids Expressen and Aftonbladet both gave the Goteborg show, one of the final dates on the Stones' two-years-long A Bigger Bang world tour, a measly two stars for their performance.

Both reviewers also seemed to single Richards out for his part in the show, with Aftonbladet claiming the guitarist looked "a bit confused." The Expressen, meanwhile, added further insult to injury by issuing Richards zero personal stars—Mick Jagger received the full four—and teased the review with the front-page headline, "The Stones' Drunken Scandal at Ullevi."

In addition to slagging off the gig, the inside article, titled rather matter-of-factly as "Keith Was Superdrunk," also quoted a fan who claimed to have met the rocker in a less than solid state of sobriety before the show.

"This is a first!" Richards said in a letter printed in a Sweden's largest daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, Wednesday. "Never before have I risen to the bait of a bad review. But this time...I have to stand up for our incredible Gothenburg audience and for our fans all over Sweden...to say that you owe them, and us, an apology."

The irate 63-year-old rocker further lambasted the journalists for speaking erroneously on behalf of the 56,000 concertgoers by claiming the show was a bust, saying the rest of the masses in Ullevi stadium "experienced a completely different show than the one you 'reviewed.' "

"You have a duty to wield the power of the press with honesty and integrity," he wrote. "How dare you cheapen the experience for them—and for the hundreds of thousands of other people across Sweden who weren't at Ullevi and have only your 'review' to go on."

"Write the truth," he wrote at the close of his diatribe, which was written after representatives read out translations of the shoddy Swedish reviews to Richards. "It was a good show."

The reviewers, though, seem to be sticking by their words.

"Our reviewer had one opinion of the quality [of the show], and Keith Richards has another," Expressen's entertainment editor, Dan Panas, told Dagens Nyheter.

In his own rebuttal to Richards' demand for an apology, Aftonbladet's Mark Larsson wrote on the tabloid's Website, "He can forget it."

"I am not going to apologize for my subjective opinion. It is Keith who should apologize. After all, it costs around $145 to see a rock star who can hardly handle the riff to 'Brown Sugar' anymore."

Per Dagens Nyeter, Richards waited until the tour was complete before lashing out at the reviews. The Rolling Stones wrapped up their 24-month world tour in London Sunday. The band had been on the road since kicking off the gigs on Aug. 21, 2005, in Boston.