Standing on Someone’s Shoulders: What the Origins of Rock and Roll Taught Me About Progress
“The blues is the bedrock. It’s the base on which rock and roll is built.”
-Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones in an interview
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“Are you interested in going to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?”
What I didn’t realize at the time is that this simple invitation would change how I think about music—and about progress itself.
A musician friend of mine recently asked me this question to take a trip with him to Cleveland to see the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I grew up listening to the radio nonstop, memorizing lyrics to various pop and rock and roll songs. So, this invitation to take a trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame piqued my interest. I wanted to take some time to reflect on this invitation. After doing some research, I found that the National Blues Museum was much closer than traveling to Cleveland. Also, I began to understand more about the origins of rock and roll. I thought this blues museum might be a first stop in music museums.
So, discovering the National Blues Museum led me to explore the origins of rock and roll and other music. This exploration led to a simple realization: many of the artists I grew up listening to were deeply rooted in blues music. Many of these popular artists were simply standing on the shoulders of blues musicians who came before them. The blues have influenced many bands, including the following list. You probably haven’t heard of any of these bands (yes, that is sarcasm oozing out):
The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, ZZ Top, Led Zeppelin, The Doors, The Allman Brothers Band, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Jimi Hendrix, and The Black Crowes.
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A pattern began to emerge. The most iconic rock bands didn’t invent something from nothing. They remixed, studied, and evolved what came before them. The bands we think of as original weren’t starting from zero—they were standing on the shoulders of something deeper.
Originality is often just well-executed influence. The people who understand this move faster—because they’re not trying to start from zero. This isn’t just true in music—it’s true in business, creativity, and almost every domain where progress happens.
After digging into some of this research on the blues, my friend and I decided to plan a Saturday visit to the National Blues Museum in St. Louis. I really enjoyed the time there and understanding how much these musicians I listened to growing up appreciated the blues. For example, John Lennon of The Beatles, in a 1971 Rolling Stone interview, discussed how the Beatles were “self‑conscious” about their debt to earlier American music (including blues and R&B), and how they would imitate and then adapt those styles into something distinctively their own.
Another example of the influence of blues on rock and roll was The Rolling Stones in their song “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Mick Jagger mentioned in 1995 that the song’s chord base and general “feel” come straight out of blues‑rock: it sits on a repeated, grinding riff in E major, with the 3rd and 7th degrees sometimes lowered, giving it that classic blues‑rock mixolydian flavor. Lyrically, the refrain “I can’t get no satisfaction” echoes the frustrated, repetitive complaints you hear in countless blues songs about love, work, and “the world never being enough.”
As an aside, after our trip, I was disappointed to hear that the National Blues Museum is planning to close. In March 2026, they would be closing due to a lack of revenue from ticket sales from the COVID shutdown. Hopefully, they can find a way to stay open or relocate. It felt ironic that a museum preserving the roots of modern music might close, even as its influence continues everywhere.
After leaving the blues museum, my friend and I went to eat dinner at a Mexican restaurant. We discussed more about the history of music while eating chips and salsa, and other delicious food. Having a clearer idea about the origins of rock and roll helped open the door to an interesting conversation.
That day made something clear: progress isn’t about starting from scratch—it’s about building on foundations that were already laid. This pattern shows up everywhere—not just in music, but in art, business, technology, and beyond. Those ideas, inventions, and developments of those before us are so important for the progress we make today.
What are you building today that someone else will build on 20 or 40 years from now?
Sources:
Keith Richards’s interview for French TV documentary Crossroads (Canal+ broadcast in 1992)
May 16, 2026