Comments, input and alterations are very welcome!
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I Just Want To See His Face
(Mick Jagger / Keith Richards)

Sunset Sound Studios, Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, US,
December 4 - 19, 1971 & January - March 1972 and
Wally Heider Studios, Los Angeles, California, US, March 24 & 25, 1972

Mick Jagger - lead vocals
Keith Richards - electric piano
Charlie Watts - drums
Nicky Hopkins - piano
Jimmy Miller - percussion
Bill Plummer - upright acoustic bass
Venetta Fields - backing vocals
Clydie King - backing vocals
Jesse Kirkland - backing vocals

Can I get a witness?

That's all right, that's all right, that's all right
Sometimes you want no trouble, sometimes you feel so down
Let this music relax you mind, let this music relax you mind
Stand up and be counted, yeah, can I get a witness?
Sometimes you need somebody, if you have somebody to love
Sometimes you ain't got nobody and you want somebody to love, alright
Then you don't want to walk and talk about Jesus
You just want to see His face
You don't want to walk and talk about Jesus
You just want to see His face, you just want to see His face
You just want to see His face, you just want to see His face
You just want to see His face

Produced by Jimmy Miller

First released on:
The Rolling Stones - “Exile On Main Street” 2LP
(Rolling Stones Records COC 69100) UK, May 12, 1972



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-01-23 11:03 by René.

A big reason why I think Exile is so much weaker overall than the previous 3 albums. Should've remained an outtake.

love it, great vibe!

Absolutely amazing song and one of the reasons Exile works so well - the sheer diversity of the muscial cornucopia on offer. It's what caused the album to be a slow burner - too many different styles to digest for the casual Stones fans at the time. But like a great gumbo it just got better after letting it stew for a while.

Anyway, back to the track - this has got Dr John stamped all over it. Jagger had just come back from working on the good Dr's The Sun, The Moon And Herbs album and carried back some of Mac's stoned out voodoo vibes with him which were perfectly suited to the band at this time, having just left the druggy haze of Villefranche. And for that reason I reckon it to be a straightahead Jagger composition - Keith playing piano compounding my ideas about that.

And it links so well between Keith's Ventilator Blues and the old vinyl side closer Let It Loose. The song shimmers like a hot summer day in New Orleans - and with those gospel background singers it has that great city stamped all over it. It's a really important part of the epic musical jigsaw and homage to Americana that Exile became.

May be song fits well on exile, most of the time I played Exile back then I use to skip this one

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Outtake? It´s as important as anything on the album, imo. What a feel, what a sound!

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DandelionPowderman
Outtake? It´s as important as anything on the album, imo. What a feel, what a sound!

I think I prefer every song on 'Dirty Work' to this (& certainly every song on TSMR)...

truly one of the best songs they did. the ultimate proof they can play everything.
if anyone can recommend me an album full of songs like this, I'd appreciate that!
I used to play Blind Boys Of Alabama to death... by the way, they did a great cover:

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Amused
truly one of the best songs they did. the ultimate proof they can play everything.
if anyone can recommend me an album full of songs like this, I'd appreciate that!
I used to play Blind Boys Of Alabama to death... by the way, they did a great cover:

This is much better than the Stones version!

Maybe if the RS version had a proper mix (& a proper intro) then I'd enjoy that more too.

Bobby Whitlock has gone on record saying he played the electric piano on this at Olympic in London...

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Sleepy City

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Amused
truly one of the best songs they did. the ultimate proof they can play everything.
if anyone can recommend me an album full of songs like this, I'd appreciate that!
I used to play Blind Boys Of Alabama to death... by the way, they did a great cover:

This is much better than the Stones version!

Maybe if the RS version had a proper mix (& a proper intro) then I'd enjoy that more too.

That's the greatness of Exile though...it's beautifully ramshuckle, sonically hazy in places and sounds like it could be played by a bar band in the pub down the road i.e the whole point of rock'n'roll as opposed to rock.

Oh man, it's perfect. It is however perfect because it is song 4 on Side 3 of "Exile". Wouldn't have worked anywhere else. Later on the band would have left it as an outtake. But imagine it on "Satanic". It would probably have suffered the same fate as "Gomper". No respect.
I wouldn't call this a "Jagger composition". It is not a composition. It is most likely a snippet plucked out of a 20 minute jam with Keith on piano, and other folks on assorted jamming posts. Once you have a block of a basic track Jagger shapes it into a bit of a structure - what he is brilliant at. Adding the Bu vocals was genius
It's been very interesting to see Phish or the Crowes cover this. Because they had to start somehow, somewhere. The Stones had it happen to them; it evolved, was slowly channeled though them. They had the luxury of shaping and molding it. But a band covering it has to make it happen right now; "swampy Voodoo vibe, appear now!" Phish turn it into a sing along; don't get it quite right. I've seen Crowes take 10 minutes just to 'get it'.

Come on, it's not even a song, it's a sketch to a song never completed. Ask Mick jagger what he thinks about Exile and you will get a more sober answer than what you will get here.

Just a bunch of noise. Considering what they pulled together to make Exile a double album, they certainly could have found something better leftover from the Sticky Fingers recordings or from the actual Exile recordings than this filler.

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Stoneage
Come on, it's not even a song, it's a sketch to a song never completed. Ask Mick jagger what he thinks about Exile and you will get a more sober answer than what you will get here.

Some of the comments here remind me of Beatles fans praising The White Album for "songs" such as Wild Honey Pie and Why Don't We Do It In The Road.

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DragonSky
Just a bunch of noise. Considering what they pulled together to make Exile a double album, they certainly could have found something better leftover from the Sticky Fingers recordings or from the actual Exile recordings than this filler.

Is this the only track in the Stones canon that you call "just a bunch of noise"? Or are there others?

Is that not a very good description? Should I have been more specific? Gomper is in the same boat with this track.

It's a chant then, to be more correct. I just love "Exile"; it's the only Stonesalbum that gives me goosegumps listening to it. Still does. But there are some fillers on it that probably came to use when they decided to make it a double album. And to complain even more: I never was a fan of the murky sound on it.

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DragonSky
Is that not a very good description? Should I have been more specific? Gomper is in the same boat with this track.

Gomper has a nice melody & harmonies.

Obviously some people can't be objective and are simply biased.

great song -sounds like Jagger standing 10 feet from the microphone doing the samba.

play the guitar boy

I don't know how to feel about this one. It has be to taken for what it is, a jam, of course it's not a conventional verse-chorus-verse song. It has a great, if almost too "Dr.John-esque", groove. At least they had the good sense to make it short and like a transition between Ventilator Blues and Let It Loose.

love it. could be a tom waits number aswell....

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Sleepy City

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DragonSky
Is that not a very good description? Should I have been more specific? Gomper is in the same boat with this track.

Gomper has a nice melody & harmonies.

Couldn't agree more. The first two minutes of Gomper has a fantastic melody that reminds me of George Harrison's beautiful The Inner Light. It's also very similar to what Pink Floyd were doing at the time. However the rest of the song drags a bit. Having said that, once on the way home from Cirrus Minor it sounded magnificent. But that's another story ><

Back to Just Wanna See His Face though; if you isolate the song sure it hangs like a limp dick. But its charm is created by the way Ventilator Blues just effortlessly fades into it. It's a masterstroke and then to top it we get the gospel feast that is Let It Loose - like a great musical moment of redemption.

Of course IJWTSHF fits Exile - because it's on the LP. It's how we're used to hearing the album. But there were certainly better songs they could have put on in it's place - I'm Not Signifying, for one. Maybe not exactly where it is but to take its place on the record certainly.

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DandelionPowderman
Outtake? It´s as important as anything on the album, imo. What a feel, what a sound!

+1

Amazing tune. Interesting that so many people think of Exile as 18 separate songs as opposed to a living, breathing, hunk of stunningly brilliant music. One of the reasons Exile stands out so much is because of the variety of songs, how they meld into one another, how they echo influences as opposed to mimicking them. "I Just..." is one of the songs I play for people who think they understand the Stones via Start Me Up and IORR. It never fails to get people to give the band a deeper listen.

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vermontoffender
Amazing tune. Interesting that so many people think of Exile as 18 separate songs as opposed to a living, breathing, hunk of stunningly brilliant music.

I could probably say something similar about Their Satanic Majesties Requests or even Dirty Work, but to me a song has to work seperate from everything else to be truly great (& I'm sure Jagger feels the same)...

"could be a tom waits number aswell"

Fantastic feel to this track, swampy, muddy and hypnotic. I also love the sentiment of the song. But as ever its down to personal choice. Just because I like it does not make it a fantastic track, its just fantastic for me. Others can disagree none of us are right or wrong.