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muenke
What is the explanation for the different live-lyrics ("Paris")? It makes sense for the Paris-Gig in 76, but NY 69?

Mick even sung these alternative lyrics when promoting the new single on The David Frost Show in June 1969, strange...

perfect.


IORR............but I like it!

One of the best single of the stones and 2nd single i bought,i was in heaven was playing all the time when i was not at school,even the LANDLADY wanted to get rid of me bless her she did not,i think as someone said should have a 20MIN MASTER SONG.
STONES ARE THE BEST AND THEY KNOW HOW TO ROCK AND BRING THE HOUSE DOWN.

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MKjan
HTW..... another great song in the greatest catalog ever.
I echo marvpeck's words about 4 posts up.
When it first came out, my friends and I gathered in disbelief.....that
this song came into being...... a masterpiece.

Yes, this was a complete jaw dropper when I first heard it over am radio. A complete original work up unlike anything ever heard before. Jack Flash was similar for me. Both songs are a sonic knockout. At volume HTW and JJF remain signature killer singles and still bring shivers down the back. When those tunes first came over the radio, all I could think of was the boys are back!

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Mathijs
Mixed feelings -the first half is one of the best tracks ever. The riffs, the sound, it's just fantastic. But the second half, with the singers, brass and a dozen guitar overdubs it gets very cramped and a bit of a mess.

I like most that the songs ends 8 bmp faster than it starts. The build-up of excitement is fantastic.

Mathijs

Mixed feelings on HTW?

OK...

Honky Tonk Woman > In book named LIFE >
Ian Stewart used to refer to us affectionately as "my little three-chord wonders." But it is an honorable title. OK, this song has got three chords, right? What can you do with those three chords? Tell it to John Lee Hooker; most of his songs are on one chord. Howlin' Wolf stuff, one chord, and Bo Diddley. It was listening to them that made me realize that silence was the canvas. Filling it all in and speeding about all over the place was certainly not my game and it wasn't what I enjoyed listening to. With five strings you can be sparse; that's your frame, that's what you work on. "Start Me Up," "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," "Honky Tonk Women," all leave those gaps between the chords. That's what I think "Heartbreak Hotel" did to me. It was the first time I'd heard something so stark. I wasn't thinking like that in those days, but that's what hit me. It was the incredible depth, instead of everything being filled in with curlicues. To a kid of my age back then, it was startling. With the five-string it was just like turning a page; there's another story. And I'm still exploring.
--------------------------------------------

We already knew Rupert Loewenstein, who soon started to run our affairs, by this time, and he checked us into the best hotel in Rio. And suddenly Anita was mysteriously going through the phone book. I said, what are you looking for? She said, I'm looking for a doctor.
"A doctor?"
"Yeah."
"What for?"
"Don't worry about it."
When she came back later that afternoon, she says, I'm pregnant. And that was Marlon.
Oh, well... great! I was very happy, but we didn't want to stop the trip now. We were headed for the Mato Grosso. We lived for a few days on a ranch, where Mick and I wrote "Country Honk," sitting on a veranda like cowboys, boots on the rail, thinking ourselves in Texas. It was the country version of what became the single "Honky Tonk Women" when we got back to civilization. We decided to put "Country Honk" out as well, on Let It Bleed, a few months later in late '69. It was written on an acoustic guitar, and I remember the place because every time you flushed the john these black blind frogs came jumping out--an interesting image.
-----------------------------------------------
It was a good writing period. Songs were coming. "Honky Tonk Women," which came out as a single before the next album, Let It Bleed, in July 1969, was the culmination of everything we were good at at the time. It's a funky track and dirty too; it's the first major use of the open tuning, where the riff and the rhythm guitar provide the melody. It's got all that blues and black music from Dartford onwards in it, and Charlie is unbelievable on that track. It was a groove, no doubt about it, and it's one of those tracks that you knew was a number one before you'd finished the @#$%&. In those days I used to set up the riffs and the titles and the hook, and Mick would fill it in. That was basically the gig. We didn't really think too much or agonize. There you go, this one goes like this, "I met a @#$%& bitch in somewhere city." Take it away, Mick. Your job now, I've given you the riff, baby. You fill it in and meanwhile I'll try and come up with another one. And he can write, can Mick. Give him the idea and he'll run with it.
--------------------------------------------------------

It's strange, given the fact that we'd had to pull the plug on Brian in the studio three years earlier, when he was lying in a coma beside his buzzing amp, to be reminded that he was still playing on tracks early in 1969, the year of his death. Autoharp on "You Got the Silver," percussion on "Midnight Rambler." Where did that come from? A last flare from the shipwreck.
By May we were playing in his replacement, Mick Taylor, at Olympic Studios--playing him in on "Honky Tonk Women," on which his overdub is there for posterity. No surprise to us, how good he was. He seemed just to step in naturally at the time. We had all heard Mick, and we knew him because he'd played with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. Everybody was looking at me, because I was the other guitar player, but my position was, I'd play with anybody. We could only find out by playing together. And we did the most brilliant stuff together, some of the most brilliant stuff the Stones ever did. Everything was there in his playing--the melodic touch, a beautiful sustain and a way of reading a song. He had a lovely sound, some very soulful stuff. He'd get where I was going even before I did. I was in awe sometimes listening to Mick Taylor, especially on that slide--try it on "Love in Vain." Sometimes just jamming, warming up with him, I'd go, whoa. I guess that's where the emotion came out. I loved the guy, I loved to work with him, but he was very shy and very distant. I'd get close to him when we were working out stuff and playing, and when he let his hair down he was extremely funny. But I always found it very difficult to find any more than the Mick Taylor I'd met the first time. You can see it on the screen in Gimme Shelter--his face has no animation. He was fighting himself somewhere inside. There's not a lot you can do about that, with guys like that; you can't bring them out. They've got to fight their own demons. You'd bring him out for an hour or two, for an evening or a night, but the next day he was brooding again. Not a barrel of laughs, let's put it like that. Well, you give certain people their space. You realize, some guys you can spend a day with them and basically you've learned all you're ever going to know about them. Like Mick Jagger in exact reverse.
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Around now we started to gather musicians to play on tracks, the so-called supersidemen, some of whom are still around. Nicky Hopkins had been there almost since the beginning; Ry Cooder had come and almost gone. On Sticky Fingers we linked up again with Bobby Keys, the great Texan saxophone player, and his partner Jim Price. We'd met Bobby very briefly, the first time since our first US tour, at Elektra Studios when he was recording with Delaney & Bonnie. Jimmy Miller was working there on Let It Bleed and called Bobby in to play a solo on "Live with Me." The track was just raw, straight-ahead, balls-to-the-wall rock and roll, tailor-made for Bobby. A long collaboration was born. He and Price put some horns on the end of "Honky Tonk Women," but they're mixed down so low you can only hear them in the very last second and a half on the fade. Chuck Berry had a saxophone just for the very end of "Roll Over Beethoven." We loved that idea of another instrument coming in just for the last second.
------------------------------------------------------------
"Rocks Off," "Happy," "Ventilator Blues," "Tumbling Dice," "All Down the Line"--that's five-string, open tuning to the max. I was starting to really fix my trademark; I wrote all that stuff within a few days. Suddenly, with the five-string, songs were just dripping off my fingers. My first real exercise on five-string was "Honky Tonk Women" a couple of years before. At that time it was, well, this is interesting. There was "Brown Sugar" too, which came out the month we quit England. By the time we got to working on Exile, I was really starting to find all these other moves, and how to make minor chords and suspended chords. I discovered that the five-string becomes very interesting when you add a capo. This limits your room to maneuver drastically, especially if you've placed the capo up on the fifth or the seventh fret. But also it gives a certain ring, a certain resonance that can't be obtained really any other way. But it's when to use it and when not to overdo it.
---------
There are comic sides to all this--one of which was Mick's pathological inability to consult me before executing his Great Ideas. Mick always thought he needed more and more props and effects. Piling on the gimmicks. The inflatable cock was great. But because a couple of things worked, every tour we started, I'd have to send acts home. I think you're better off without any props. Or the minimum. Many times I cut down the props projects on these tours. He wanted stilt walkers. Luckily, at dress rehearsals it was raining, and all the stilt walkers fell over. I had to fire thirty-five dancers who were going to appear for about thirty seconds on "Honky Tonk Women." Sight unseen, I sent them all home. Sorry, girls, go hoof it somewhere else. That was a hundred thousand dollars down the sink. Mick had got used to the fait accompli in the '70s, believing I wouldn't notice his decisions. I almost always did, even then, especially when it came to music. My weary faxes would go like this: Mick, how is it that the Stones tracks are being mixed and about to be issued without a by your leave? I find this odd to say the least. Terrible mixes anyway. If you don't know that by now... this is thrown at me as a fait accompli. How could you be so clumsy? Who chose the tracks? Who chose the mixing? Why do you imagine that it is your decision? Will you never realize that you cannot piss around with me?
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71Tele

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Mathijs
Mixed feelings -the first half is one of the best tracks ever. The riffs, the sound, it's just fantastic. But the second half, with the singers, brass and a dozen guitar overdubs it gets very cramped and a bit of a mess.

I like most that the songs ends 8 bmp faster than it starts. The build-up of excitement is fantastic.

Mathijs

Mixed feelings on HTW?

OK...

Yeah...something I don't have with JJF, BS, TD, Miss You, SMU. So, it's a superb track, a superb hit, but surpassed by forementioned tracks.

Mathijs

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Mathijs
Mixed feelings -the first half is one of the best tracks ever. The riffs, the sound, it's just fantastic. But the second half, with the singers, brass and a dozen guitar overdubs it gets very cramped and a bit of a mess.

I like most that the songs ends 8 bmp faster than it starts. The build-up of excitement is fantastic.

Mathijs

Hmm.. interesting. I can see your point abou the second half but to my ears it is just perfect. I think it is essential to the 'drama' of the song to build up the final mess - it starts with one of the most simple and archaic sound ideas ever - a cowbell, drums, lazy simple guitar riff, not even having a bass until chorus.

Simply one of the greatest rock and roll songs ever made. No imagination to come up with the right adjectives now... When the Stones talk about groove - this original single is the reference (they never surpassed it live). This song probably has most SEX ever written in terms of music. The music of "Satisfaction" is just kid's foreplay - this is as adult horny as it can get. That's why it sounds so original and Stonesy - not anyone like Dylan or Lennon/McCartney has any credits to get there. Probably also the best produced and mixed Stones song - with "Gimme Shelter" - ever.

- Doxa



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2011-02-23 10:20 by Doxa.

It's a perfect song and harks back to the era of 45 RPM singles. Honky Tonk Woman was probably in just about every single jukebox on Earth for years and years.

Wasn't it Michelangelo that said that the statue was already inside the block of marble and he simply brought it into existence?

Honky Tonk Woman is like that. It's like the perfect song and the perfect guitar sound and the perfect mix was always there, and the Rolling Stones just "channeled" it into existence.

The Stones get bashed a fair amount around here but they can't get enough praise for that song. I was just a tad too young to truly remember it when it was released. When I finally became fully aware with the release of Hot Rocks, it's like I could then remember it tugging at my soul from when it was actually released when I was 10 years old.

I think it's a good song. lol

i remember very vividly when it came out - Brian had just unbelievably died, and (at least in my suburban teenybopper fan circles)
no one had had time to digest that or catch our breath from it; and the whole world had gotten direly heavy in other ways as well -
and the Rolling Stones came up with this utterly inappropriate piece of joyful conscience-free raunch.
it was unlike anything. it was completely irresistible. it was the Rolling Stones.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-02-23 13:15 by with sssoul.

July 69:

Death of a Stone-Hyde Park-Honky Tonk Woman - Man on the Moon...



2 1 2 0

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muenke
What is the explanation for the different [in-concert] lyrics

i read somewhere long ago that the Paris verse was the original version,
but they "americanized" the single release to suit their biggest audience.
the Mick is apparently fond of the Paris verse, though - as well he should be!
"as naked as the day that i will die" is such a beautiful, resonant line

he sang it that way at at least one of the 2006 shows as well

I never pay much attention to lyrics of rock songs. This is one of the very very few exceptions. The first verse in particular. Class A poetry! A world of mixed emotions in those opening lines. And they hit something deep inside me. How many times have I lived that exact feeling?

What a song!

C

The song is so big, if you imagine the history of rock music without it, you end up with a large gap.

Hearing the single version I'm always surprised how delicately the guitar intro is played, compared to later live versions.

----------------------------
"Music is the frozen tapioca in the ice chest of history."

"Shit!... No shit, awright!"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-02-23 13:14 by Greg.

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Doxa

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Mathijs
Mixed feelings -the first half is one of the best tracks ever. The riffs, the sound, it's just fantastic. But the second half, with the singers, brass and a dozen guitar overdubs it gets very cramped and a bit of a mess.

I like most that the songs ends 8 bmp faster than it starts. The build-up of excitement is fantastic.

Mathijs

Hmm.. interesting. I can see your point abou the second half but to my ears it is just perfect. I think it is essential to the 'drama' of the song to build up the final mess - it starts with one of the most simple and archaic sound ideas ever - a cowbell, drums, lazy simple guitar riff, not even having a bass until chorus.

Simply one of the greatest rock and roll songs ever made. No imagination to come up with the right adjectives now... When the Stones talk about groove - this original single is the reference (they never surpassed it live). This song probably has most SEX ever written in terms of music. The music of "Satisfaction" is just kid's foreplay - this is as adult horny as it can get. That's why it sounds so original and Stonesy - not anyone like Dylan or Lennon/McCartney has any credits to get there. Probably also the best produced and mixed Stones song - with "Gimme Shelter" - ever.

- Doxa

Don't get me wrong, it's a monster of a track, and in the top 5 of best singles ever. But, to me it has flaws, whereas I see Brown Sugar as the ultimate Stones single. In Brown Sugar, just everything is as perfect as can be. With HTW, as stated, it is a bit cramped at the end. And, there's something else that never felt right: Charlie's drumming in the intro and first verse. To me, it lacks his famous swing. It's a bit butch, pounding just a tad too hard. For years I have doubt it actually is Charlie and Jimmy Miller instead. I still feel awkward about it.

Btw, Jagger has stated they edited out the Paris verse as three verses is too long for a radio single, and the gay reference would mean it wouldn't be played in the US.

Mathijs
Mathijs

I like the riff but it sounds a bit forced. It's the Downtown Suzie lick changed to fit Millers rhythm.

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Redhotcarpet
I like the riff but it sounds a bit forced. It's the Downtown Suzie lick changed to fit Millers rhythm.

"A bit forced"? This is probably the only time I could think it would be appropriate for Keith Richards to show the blade...><

- Doxa

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71Tele

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Mathijs
Mixed feelings -the first half is one of the best tracks ever. The riffs, the sound, it's just fantastic. But the second half, with the singers, brass and a dozen guitar overdubs it gets very cramped and a bit of a mess.

I like most that the songs ends 8 bmp faster than it starts. The build-up of excitement is fantastic.

Mathijs

Mixed feelings on HTW?

OK...

give him credit - it's hard to adjust feelings in the space of three minutes....

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Doxa

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Redhotcarpet
I like the riff but it sounds a bit forced. It's the Downtown Suzie lick changed to fit Millers rhythm.

"A bit forced"? This is probably the only time I could think it would be appropriate for Keith Richards to show the blade...><

- Doxa

Sorry! The riff is great and I LOVE the 1975/1976 version. Love it. Everything the band does on that track on that tour/tours is awesome. In 1975 the riff was ripe.

A visceral tour-de-force, which (after 40 years), still sounds as incredibly raunchy and fresh and dangerous as it was on the day this rocket-ship was released. Those first few taps on the cowbell still grab me by the throat and put a big, shit-eating grin on my face. Then Charlie chimes in, laying down that propulsive, driving rhythm with jaw-dropping authority. Then, those incredible open-G guitar chords join in ... I still pull out the air guitar every time!!! That riff, baby, so timeless, so classic ... sending the listener into the stratosphere.

HTW has this remarkably weightless, joyful quality ... and it is funky beyond belief. Like Keith wrote in Life, it is the very starkness of the song ... the gaps between the chords ... that really give it depth.

Easily one of the greatest tracks ever recorded.

Drew

I think it was the Steel Wheels tour where Jagger ruined it by singing "Honky tonk, Honky tonk women".....instead of "hoooooonnnnkyyyy tooonk wooomen".

Hard to explain in text. Basically he clipped the vocal instead of elongating it. Seeing as everyone has (rightly) raved about the guitars, cowbell, drums etc - it seems fair to assess Jaggers vocal

he did that on the '75/'76 versions....and i thought it was cool thing.

I thought he was old and couldnt hold the vocal any more! My first time seeing em - Glasgow 1990!

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letitloose
I thought he was old and couldnt hold the vocal any more! My first time seeing em - Glasgow 1990!

it was a style/arrangement choice, not a vocal necessity.....i liked it.

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Mathijs

I think he mentions Keys and Price as the horn section. From memory, I believe Wyman states in Rolling With the Stones that they worked on HTW thoughout March and April, but they never got it right. Then, in early June they suddenly got it right in one take, and this is the take they used to overdub. He states they basically recorded and finished the track in a day.

Wasn't the audition and recordings of Taylor on May 14th? I always understood that he was aware of the situation with Brian, as the band was complaining about him not showing up to sessions. But Taylor did a session on May 14th I believe, and was asked back two weeks later to what he believed where overdub sessions, while the Stones already had decided they wanted him in the band. On the overdub sessions in early June he did Live With Me, Country Honk and Honky Tonk Women, and they recorded I Don't Know Why, Jiving Sister Fanny and I'm Going Down.

Mathijs

I know what Bill says, but there's many a contradiction in the the bands memories about the track.

Mick Taylor did not play with them until after he had left John Mayall's band, his audition/first session was on the 30th May which is When Live With Me was recorded. He overdubbed on to HTW the following day or so.

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letitloose
I think it was the Steel Wheels tour where Jagger ruined it by singing "Honky tonk, Honky tonk women".....instead of "hoooooonnnnkyyyy tooonk wooomen".

Hard to explain in text. Basically he clipped the vocal instead of elongating it. Seeing as everyone has (rightly) raved about the guitars, cowbell, drums etc - it seems fair to assess Jaggers vocal

I agree, that kind of ruins it for me too.

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Redhotcarpet

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Doxa

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Redhotcarpet
I like the riff but it sounds a bit forced. It's the Downtown Suzie lick changed to fit Millers rhythm.

"A bit forced"? This is probably the only time I could think it would be appropriate for Keith Richards to show the blade...><

- Doxa

Sorry! The riff is great and I LOVE the 1975/1976 version. Love it. Everything the band does on that track on that tour/tours is awesome. In 1975 the riff was ripe.

So you are saying that the original single didn't work for you? What could possibly sound forced with a completely original riff, mind blowing lyrics, and energy seldom seen in anything before or since? HTW was a complete original. Even non Stones fans thought this song was the sh%t back when it was released. Of course everybody has the right to their opinions...

Absolutely, my ALL-TIME favorite song by any band/performer. Numero uno!

"Take all the pain...It's yours anyway"

The perfect example of a song that causes you to involuntarily move.

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JuanTCB
The perfect example of a song that causes you to involuntarily move.

EXACTLY!

- Doxa