The Rolling Stonesā hit song that almost never happened
2024/01/10
By 1981, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were barely talking, having differing opinions on the direction of The Rolling Stones. Making new music together seemed out of the question, but they were booked on a world tour, and needed an album to tour behind. Thatās when engineer Chris Kimsey stepped in to save the day, poring over forgotten outtakes from the bandās previous sessions to cobble together what would become the Tattoo You album. The lead track, āStart Me Up,ā was the biggest surprise to Keith Richards, who had written it as a reggae song but never liked what he heard when it was recorded. But, Kimsey found a diamond in the rough: when Richards and Charlie Watts briefly went into the rockinā version we fans have come to know in one of those forgotten sessions. That outtake, after a little polishing, became one of the biggest hits of the Stonesā career, and itās a miracle it was ever found to begin with. Get into the story in this episode of the Behind The Song podcast.
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