Ed Sheeran was 23 years old when he said it. He said it casually, the way you say things when you think you’re talking to a stranger on a train. Never really got the Rolling Stones to be honest. The man sitting next to him nodded slowly. Ed kept talking. The man kept listening. It was 40 minutes before Ed looked at the man’s hands, at the rings, at the face.
Ed Sheeran, who had listened to Keith Richards his entire life, had just spent 40 minutes telling Keith Richards that he didn’t understand Keith Richards. Ed Sheeran in November of 2014 was not yet the Ed Sheeran that most of the world knows him as now. Ed Sheeran in November of 2014 was 23 years old, had released two studio albums, plus in 2011 and multiply in 2014, had sold millions of records across two continents, and was in the middle of building the kind of career that most musicians spend their entire lives attempting to build and never quite managing. The multiply album had been released in June of that year and had been one of the best-selling records of 2014 in Britain and internationally. Ed Sheeran was successful. Ed Sheeran was recognizable to a significant and growing portion of the music-consuming population. Ed Sheeran was, in November of 2014, on the way to becoming one of the most successful solo artists of his generation, but had not yet fully
arrived at the specific level of fame where ordinary activities like taking trains become impossible. Ed Sheeran was not yet the figure of such absolute cultural ubiquity that his presence on a train would produce an immediate reaction from everyone in the carriage. Ed Sheeran was still, just barely, a person who could sit next to a stranger for 40 minutes without the stranger realizing who he was.
This window was closing. Ed Sheeran did not know it was closing. On November 14th, 2014, the window was still open, which meant that on the morning of November 14th, 2014, Ed Sheeran could still on occasion take a train from London to Leeds without the journey becoming an event. Ed Sheeran had taken the East Midlands train from St.
Pancras that morning because Ed Sheeran had a commitment in Leeds the following day and had decided to travel the previous evening. Ed Sheeran traveled by train when the distance allowed it, preferring the specific quality of time that train journeys produced, the enforced pause, the landscape moving past, the particular kind of thinking that motion through space produces when you are not responsible for the motion.
Ed Sheeran had a notebook and a cup of coffee and the intention of spending 2 hours writing, which was what Ed Sheeran did on trains when trains cooperated. The train did not cooperate in the way Ed had intended. The man in the seat beside Ed Sheeran was awake and apparently interested in conversation, and Ed Sheeran, who had grown up in a family where talking to strangers on public transport was considered normal and desirable rather than awkward and to be avoided, had responded to the man’s opening comment and found himself in a conversation about music before the train had cleared the London suburbs. The man was Keith Richards. Ed Sheeran did not know this. Ed Sheeran had not looked at the man carefully when he sat down, had registered an older man in a dark jacket with the peripheral awareness of someone who is thinking about their notebook and their coffee. Ed Sheeran had not looked at the rings. Ed Sheeran had not looked at the face with any particular attention. Ed Sheeran had looked at a person sitting beside him on a train and had responded
to what that person said and had begun a conversation. This was what Ed Sheeran did. This was what Ed Sheeran had always done. The conversation began, as many conversations about music begin, in a general way, the state of it, the direction of it, the things that were interesting and the things that were less interesting.
Ed Sheeran was 23 years old and had opinions about music the way 23-year-olds with careers in music have opinions about music, specifically, confidently, with the particular energy of someone who has been thinking about these things intensively for several years and has not yet accumulated enough experience of being wrong to moderate the confidence with which the opinions are expressed.
This was not a flaw. This was what 23 looked like when 23 was paying attention. Ed Sheeran talked about the artists who had influenced him. Ed Sheeran talked about the artists he was currently listening to. Ed Sheeran talked about where he thought music was going and where he thought it had been and the specific areas of its history that he found most interesting.
The man listened and occasionally asked questions. Good questions, the kind that opened things up rather than narrowing them. The kind that suggested the person asking had been thinking about the same subjects from an interesting angle and wanted to hear what happened when the conversation followed the opening rather than redirecting away from it.
It was in the context of this conversation, 20 minutes in, relaxed, both people engaged, Ed speaking more than the man, but the man contributing with the specific economy of someone who chooses their words carefully that Ed Sheeran said the thing. Ed Sheeran was talking about the bands that had been foundational to his understanding of music. Ed Sheeran mentioned several.
The man beside him nodded at each one with the expression of someone who recognized the names and their significance. Then Ed Sheeran said, “The Rolling Stones were never really one of those for me to be honest. I know they’re important. I know what they meant. I just never personally connected with them the way other people seem to.
” The man beside him nodded slowly. Ed Sheeran continued. Ed Sheeran explained why, the specific reasons he had never quite connected with the Rolling Stones music in the way that he had connected with other music. Ed Sheeran was not dismissive. Ed Sheeran was thoughtful and considered and careful to acknowledge the importance, the influence, the historical significance of what the Rolling Stones had done.
Ed Sheeran simply expressed, honestly and without malice, that the Rolling Stones had never been the band that moved him the way they had moved other people and that he had never fully understood why they moved people the way they did. The man beside him listened to all of this without interrupting.
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Then the man asked one question. What was it specifically that you couldn’t connect with? Ed Sheeran answered. Ed Sheeran talked for another 8 minutes about the specific qualities of the Rolling Stones music that he found. Not bad, he was careful to say, not even less good, just less personally resonant.
Ed Sheeran talked about rhythm and about the specific kind of rawness that the Stones produced and why that rawness for him personally didn’t land the way it seemed to land for so many other listeners. Ed Sheeran was 23 and articulate and genuinely trying to explain something he had thought about for years without fully resolving.
The man listened to all of it. Then the man said, that’s interesting. Ed Sheeran said, do you like them? The Rolling Stones? The man looked at Ed Sheeran. The man said, you could say that, yeah. Ed Sheeran looked at the man. Ed Sheeran looked at the hands, at the rings, at the specific configuration of rings on the fingers of an older man in a dark jacket on a train from London to Leeds on a November morning. Ed Sheeran looked at the face.
Ed Sheeran has described what happened in the next 4 seconds in consistent terms across every account of this story he has given. The 4 seconds, Ed says, contained the complete and instantaneous reversal of everything he had said in the previous 22 minutes. The 4 seconds contained the specific sensation of understanding in real time that the stranger he had been explaining his complicated relationship with the Rolling Stones to was the person most responsible for the Rolling Stones existing in the form that had produced Ed’s complicated relationship with them. The 4 seconds contained the specific quality of mortification that only 23-year-olds can fully experience. The total, unmitigated, nowhere to hide mortification of someone who has been completely and publicly wrong in a way that cannot be undone and that is still technically in progress. Because the person you have been wrong in front of is still sitting right next to you on a moving train. Ed Sheeran said, “You’re Keith Richards.” And Keith Richards
said, “Yeah.” Ed Sheeran said nothing for a moment. Then Ed Sheeran said, “I’ve just spent 20 minutes telling Keith Richards I don’t connect with The Rolling Stones.” Keith Richards said, “You were honest. I appreciate honest.” Ed Sheeran put his face in his hands. Ed has described this physical response across all accounts of the story.
The specific involuntary movement of putting his face in his hands, which Ed says he has never done before or since in a public situation and which in this case required approximately no deliberation at all. It was simply what his body did in the absence of any better option. Keith Richards said, “Don’t do that.
It’s a fair opinion. Lots of people don’t connect with us the same way.” Ed Sheeran said from behind his hands, “I grew up listening to you. You’re one of the reasons I play guitar the way I play guitar. I have studied your technique specifically.” Keith Richards said, “And you still don’t connect with the music.
” Ed Sheeran lowered his hands. Ed Sheeran said, “I mean, when you put it that way, it sounds considerably worse.” Keith Richards laughed. This was, by Ed Sheeran’s account across all versions of the story, one of the most relieving sounds Ed Sheeran had heard in his 23 years.
Keith Richards laughed for several seconds and then said, “It doesn’t sound worse. It sounds like you’ve thought about it seriously. Most people either love it or hate it without actually thinking about why. You’ve worked out specifically why it doesn’t land for you. That’s more interesting than someone who just says they love it without knowing what they’re responding to.
The conversation continued for the remaining 40 minutes of the journey. Ed Sheeran and Keith Richards talked about what music does to different people and why the same music can produce entirely different responses in equally serious listeners. They talked about rhythm and about the blues foundation of the Rolling Stones sound and why that foundation resonated so deeply with some listeners and so much less with others.
Keith Richards talked about Muddy Waters and the specific way Muddy Waters approached the relationship between rhythm and melody and how that approach had entered the Rolling Stones music not as a stylistic choice but as a foundational principle that determined everything that came after it. Keith Richards talked about the way the blues use tension differently from the way classical Western music use tension, not as something to be resolved but as something to be sustained and lived in.
Keith Richards talked about all of this with the specificity of someone who had been thinking about it since he was a teenager in Dartford with American import records and had never stopped. Keith Richards talked about the origins of the Stones approach in a way that Ed had not heard before, not the familiar mythology, not the received history, but the specific musical reasons for specific choices, the decisions about sound and approach that had produced what the Rolling Stones were. Ed Sheeran listened to this with the specific attention of someone who is learning something they had not known they were missing and who is grateful to be missing it because not missing it means the learning is finished. When the train arrived in Leeds, Ed Sheeran and Keith Richards stood on the platform for a moment. Ed Sheeran said, “I’m sorry for” Keith Richards interrupted him and said, “Stop apologizing for an honest opinion.” Ed Sheeran said, “I still feel like an idiot.” Keith Richards looked at Ed Sheeran for a moment. Then Keith Richards said, “Good. Feeling like an
idiot occasionally is precisely how you stop being one.” Ed Sheeran has told the story of the train from London to Leeds in November of 2014 several times in public, in interviews and in conversations and in the specific context of being asked about the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to him professionally, which is the context in which the story most naturally and reliably arises.
Ed Sheeran always tells it the same way. Ed Sheeran begins with the train, the stranger, the conversation about music. Ed Sheeran arrives at The Rolling Stones. Ed Sheeran arrives at the Rings. Ed Sheeran arrives at the 4 seconds, always described as the longest 4 seconds of his adult life. Ed Sheeran arrives at the face in the hands.
Ed Sheeran has never once led with the fact that Keith Richards told him feeling like an idiot was a good thing. Ed Sheeran has never led with the fact that the conversation that followed the 4 seconds was one of the best conversations about music Ed has ever had. Ed Sheeran leads with the mortification every time, without exception. The lesson comes after.
That is the correct order because the mortification is the point of entry and the lesson is the destination and you cannot understand the destination without having been through the point of entry first. Keith Richards has never publicly mentioned the train journey. The journey from London to Leeds in November of 2014 is in Ed Sheeran’s memory and in Ed Sheeran’s public record and nowhere else.
Keith Richards sat on a train, had a conversation, laughed at the right moment, and got off in Leeds. Ed Sheeran still does not connect with The Rolling Stones the way other people do. Ed Sheeran has never claimed otherwise. Ed Sheeran has never, since November of 2014, felt the need to pretend otherwise.
Ed Sheeran now knows exactly why he doesn’t connect with them. The specific musical reasons, the theoretical framework, the relationship between the blues tradition and what The Rolling Stones did with it, and why that relationship produces a specific kind of music that some listeners find transformative and Ed Sheeran finds interesting but not personally transformative.
Ed Sheeran found all of that out from Keith Richards on a train in 40 minutes, having spent the first 20 of those minutes explaining to Keith Richards why he didn’t connect with Keith Richards. That is not the worst way to learn something. That might in fact be exactly the right way because what Ed Sheeran learned on that train was not just something about the Rolling Stones.
Ed Sheeran learned that honest opinions, even when expressed to exactly the wrong person at exactly the wrong moment, produce better conversations than polite ones. Ed Sheeran learned that the specific embarrassment of being wrong in front of the wrong person is entirely survivable and in fact useful. Ed Sheeran learned that Keith Richards says the useful thing when the useful thing is what is needed and laughs when laughing is what is needed and does both at the right moment precisely.
The train arrived in Leeds at half past 11:00 in the morning. Ed Sheeran went to his commitment. Keith Richards went wherever Keith Richards was going that day. Neither of them mentioned the journey to anyone else that day. The 40 minutes are in Ed Sheeran’s memory and in Ed Sheeran’s public record and nowhere else that anyone has been able to locate.
That seems right. Some journeys belong entirely to the people who take them. Some lessons belong to the person who learned them on a train face in hands next to Keith Richards. If this story made you smile, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something completely honest to exactly the wrong person and had it somehow turn into the best conversation of your entire year? Tell us about it in the comments below.
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