Comments, input and alterations are very welcome!
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Sweet Virginia
(Mick Jagger / Keith Richards)

Olympic Sound Studios, London, UK, June 30, July 20, 1970 & October 17 - 31,
1970, 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, backing vocals, harmonica
Keith Richards - acoustic guitar, backing vocals
Charlie Watts - drums
Bill Wyman - bass
Mick Taylor - acoustic guitar, backing vocals
Ian Stewart - piano
Bobby Keys - saxophone
Jimmy Miller - backing vocals

Wading through the waste, stormy winter
And there's not a friend to help you through
Trying to stop the waves behind your eyeballs
Drop your reds drop your greens and blues

Thank you for your wine, California
Thank you for your sweet and bitter fruits
Yes, I've got the desert in my toenail
And I hid the speed inside my shoe
But come on, come on down, Sweet Virginia, yeah
Come on, honey child, I beg of you
Come on, come on down, you got it in you
Got to scrape that shit right off your shoes
I want you to come on and sing for me now, now, now, now

Yeah, I want you to come on, come on down, Sweet Virginia
I said, I want you to come on, honey child, I beg of you
I, I want you to come on, honey child, you got it in you
Got to scrape that shit right off you shoes, one more time, yeah
Come on, come on down, Sweet Virginia
Yeah, come on, come on down, I beg of you
Come on, come on down, you got it in you, got to scrape that shit right off your shoes
Produced by Jimmy Miller

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

So simple, yet so masterfully executed. A song that sticks like glue.

Sounds like a rehearsal, very sparsely miked. Almost like a campfire romp. Love it dearly

How more evocative of classic country can you get than the start of this song which rolls into earshot like a mid-19th-century wagon being driven by a frontiersman heading out over the Western Plains in search of a piece of America.

And ain’t that just what the Stones aimed to do and achieved so well with Exile On Main Street – an album that sets out in search of their four great American inspirational cornerstones; rock’n’roll, r’n’b, blues and country.

Right at the start of the song we get Mick’s plaintive, wailing campfire harp which so evocatively sets the tone for the first song on the wonderfully reflective and slightly melancholy country side of the original double vinyl album.

And with Keith’s lackadaisically strummed acoustic you’re left in no doubt that this is Countryville Central – not the rhinestone country pop of Nashville nor the more modern, beat driven, Bakersfield sound either but old school, early 20th century country blues.

You’re almost fully expecting Mick to come in with a lyric about how his woman done left him or how his hound dog can’t catch rabbits no more. However, it comes as a comedic slap in the face when you first hear those lines ‘tryin’ to stop the waves behind your eyeballs’ and the giveaway ‘drop your reds, drop your greens and blues’.

Yep, folks, it’s another Stones’ drug song, a come down song about the weariness of life on the road and to me, everything about it suggests that both the lyrics and music were written by Keith.

But as slow and plodding as it is Sweet Virginia still remains one of the songs that I really look forward to hearing on the album. And more than anything that’s because of the great driving beat created by Charlie and Bobby Keys’ immense sax as well as Jagger’s rasping vocal and that great southern choir of background singers which include Dr John, Clydie King, Tami Lynn, Vanetta Fields, Shirley Goodman and reputedly Gram Parsons.

There’s also a wonderful honky tonk piano playing in the background which I presume would be Ian Stewart.

It’s always a joy to see them do this live and I wish they’d play it more often.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-02-23 11:40 by Silver Dagger.

Btw - I'm sure I heard a mandolin in there, way low in the mix. Possible?

Perfection!

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Silver Dagger
Btw - I'm sure I heard a mandolin in there, way low in the mix. Possible?

I think that is Taylor's guitar?

This is the song that made country music cool for me. The sound of a motley band of brothers drinking on the porch, playing guitar and harmonizing vocals. Love everything about it. Bridged the gap between my traditional country loving fathers music and my own. Powerful stuff in more ways than one. Love the live versions where Keith harmonizes on more than just the chorus, lines like "drop your reds, drop your greens and blues" just scream for those heartfelt harmonies.

I don't hear a mandolin in it Dagger, possibly what your hearing is a Nashville strung guitar. But I can say from experience that a mandolin does indeed work great for this tune. peace

Love this song from the first time I heard it and still do seems you never get bored of the song.......

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Ha!!! In one week of Track Talk we go from the ridiculous to the sublime!

Sweet Virginia is obviously one of the catchiest and most transcendentally delightful songs the Stones have ever recorded, and it offers such blissful release from this world’s troubles, such ecstatic joy and cathartic redemption, that words cannot really do it justice. But I will try.

From the get-go, Keith’s chicken-pickin' strums create an utterly delectable down-home rustic mood, and then, when Mick’s country-fried harp joins in… ohhhh baby … the listener is transported into the ether.

The guitars, shit, do they ever sound amazing … Keith’s soulfulness and Mick Taylor’s finesse conspiring together to set the spirit free. Notice in the intro how the shimmering mandolin-style tone of Taylor’s guitar so perfectly complements the raunchy sound of the harp.

Then, Charlie joins in and gives this song so much strut and swing that it should come with a warning label: there is NO WAY you’re gonna resist getting off your ass and dancing around like a damn fool!!

Lyrically, the whole thing is just radiant in its brilliance; misery and redemption, squalor and grace melding together and captured in words of poetic beauty. Mick’s drug-addled, world-weary vocal delivery is ravishing. And those choruses, with their irresistible harmonies … the essence of gospel salvation of the spirit, distilled by the greatest rock and roll band the world has ever known.

But that’s not all. Bobby Keys, oh man, does Bobby sound incredible on this track, pouring his sweet heart and soul into this like there is no tomorrow. Despite the brilliance of his musical colleagues, Bobby ultimately steals the show.

Never have desolation, dejection, drunkenness, debauchery and despair sounded more delicious. This one washes all my worries away and makes me feel lucky to be alive in a world graced by the genius of the Rolling Stones.

Drew

As much I am thrilled of this track, I am thrilled of Silver Dagger's stunning piece of criticism!

An EXILE number... a left-over from STICKY FINGERS. Well, that only says what was the quality of their material those days, and I can't really blame that they left this thing out, if they had things like "Wild Horses" and "Dead Flowers" in the can waiting to be released. "Sweet Virginia" needed to wait its turn.

But it found its natural home in EXILE, and thank lord it did. It is one of those numbers that pops up to my mind when I think about teh album. It sets the feel to the second side. And even though it took me longer than any of those sides to grow on me (it was the most Exilist side of any of them in that sense!), that very side marks damn much why EXILE is EXILE, by giving most the profound, non-compromised, deep-digging feel and nature of the album. Like Silver Dagger said, this was no cheap easy-listening Nashville or Bakersfield stuff, but damn deep exercise in the very essence of country music. In a way, a modern country rock thing like "Dead Flowers" sounds pretty commercial and even thin in compared to it. Keith's idea of "it's all same shit" is now really traced to the very beginning of recorded American country and folk music. If one gets, say, Blind Lemon Jefferson, one gets also what the white folks, many times not radically different circumstances, even though on the other side of the road, were playing at the time.

But at the same, being such a deep exercise, it is just so funny and sexy and... Stonesy! No one else can make such a coctail. It's like entering an academic seminar, but you end up smoking joints and having sex... It is pretty hard to put it in words what it exactly is.. Must be something with Mick and Keith's personality. They know everything, have made their authentic music exams with A-level results, but still they leave the impression of 'we piss anywhere, man!'. Could be also some kind of actual distance from the Americana. They are English, after all. But then again, I can't hear any other Englisman sounding like them. Or anyone.

- Doxa



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-02-23 13:09 by Doxa.

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Doxa

But it found its natural home in EXILE, and thank lord it did. It is one of those numbers that pops up to my mind when I think about the album. It sets the feel to the second side. And even though it took me longer than any of those sides to grow on me (it was the most Exilist side of any of them in that sense!), that very side marks damn much why EXILE is EXILE, by giving most the profound, non-compromised, deep-digging feel and nature of the album.

Never thought about which side of Exile I like best but now you mention it Doxa I think the country side (2) is the most satisfying. Actually this thought is redundant to the CD generation as it's probably digested in one long listen these days.

But the album was definitely programmed as 4 distinct sounding sides which is one of the reasons why it holds up so well today.

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DandelionPowderman

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Silver Dagger
Btw - I'm sure I heard a mandolin in there, way low in the mix. Possible?

I think that is Taylor's guitar?

yep I reckon it is...

top song.

I've never been a big country music fanatic, but this is my absolute favourite Stones song, and therefore, probably my favourite song of all time. It has a unique kind of a feel to it which had never been captured by any song before its release, and it's never been captured by any song since. Sweet Virginia truly is a one of a kind song, and I love it with all my heart.

Slight deviation here, but mentioning Exile's four distinct sides reminded me of another brilliant and similarly epic double album, released almost at the same time, in May 1972 - Stephen Stills' outstanding Manassas.

There are a lot of similarities to Exile, namely extraordinary musicianship, great songs and an album divided into four themed sides. Manassas has a rock side, a country side, a jam side and well, more rock. Bill Wyman played on it and said that he would have let the Stones to join the group.

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DandelionPowderman
So simple, yet so masterfully executed. A song that sticks like glue.

Sounds like a rehearsal, very sparsely miked. Almost like a campfire romp. Love it dearly

I think that is the greatness and also a kind of limitation of The Rolling Stones, or, more pricely, that of Jagger/Richards song-writing. They are able to come up with very simple ideas, and put them together with such an irrestible way, that it sounds almost too obvious: "how can not anyone else being able to do that so naturally, isn't it all 'there', just go and pick up?" Especially I think their country songs sound many times like results of lucky amateurs. With that I mean, they probably are not so deep on playing or knowing the genre throughout that they could write dozens of similar songs without sounding like repeating themselves. There is only a limited amount of fresh-sounding, original ideas in them. And they know/knew that. Keith, especially during those times when hanging with Gram Parsons, was rather deep in the canon, and probably had more of them, but still they were extremily conscious of not over-using them, but kept their heads cool and albums fresh and exciting. If we look their country numbers from, say, "High And Try" to "Faraway Eyes", each of them sounds unique, justified, adding something to their catalogue. The impression is that 'oh shit, those guys know how to nail that genre as well', and probably leave us to demand some more.

I think Jagger especially is awere of that. He can charm us all with some odd country number here and then - think of "Evening Gown" - but knows that it is the rarity of them, especially in the context of rather different material, which makes the effect, and the danger of not sounding so inspired and fresh will be present if the trick would be used more. There probably aren't popping too many good country songs ideas in his mind, and he won't, I am sure, consciously sit down to write country songs. The songs sound like coming up naturally, not that of based on some learned habit and handcraft. I think a similar argument can be said of 'pure' blues songs they occasionally do. It is enough to have some "The Storm" or "Back Of My Hand" occasionally, but if he/they would write material like that for, say, a whole album, the limits of the imagination and amount of fresh ideas would soon to be seen.

Unfortunately, the limits of fresh ideas, using very simple and catchy components, had been seen for a long time in their most typical, Stones-kind of rocker material as well (you know, the riffs, structural choices, melody patterns). The lack of their input during the last decade/s partly is - I think - a reflection of that. They simply just perfected the idiom and said probably anything that can been said within it, a long time ago, and I can understand why it can be artistically frustrating just to circulate and re-warm old ideas - ideas that had been utilized to death already - if there is no longer the inner muse naturally giving new ones. So, in a way, I see their unproductivity also as a kind of sign of artistic honesty. Why to say anything, if there is nothing to say?

- Doxa



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2015-02-23 14:49 by Doxa.

This is a masterpiece in the same class as 'Factory Girl' and 'Dead Flowers'..

Good post, Doxa. I would add The Worst in there as well, although it is a bit more "irish-sounding".

Both Mick and Keith know that they can't base whole albums on country and blues-tracks. At least, not with top-quality material.

Yeah, simplicity is indeed one of the Stones's fortes. Very few bands can make so simple songs, and with "little effort" elevate them into classic songs. By little effort I mean uncomplicated production and/or non-technical important musical contributions.

But, as you write, it's hard to maintain this formula to include many good songs, as the years pass, perhaps because they're running out of all their tricks.

Moon Is Up, for instance, was a nice little song. But imagine that one with an acoustic guitar and Mick's harp... I'm not sure if the song would carry itself, if you know what I mean.

Sweet Virginia - open all hours!

Absolutely perfect.

It's agreed that Sweet Virginia, Torn and Frayed, etc.. are country oriented songs.


How would one classify Sweet Black Angel? Doesn't really matter as this song bridges the entire album.

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Chris Fountain
It's agreed that Sweet Virginia, Torn and Frayed, etc.. are country oriented songs.


How would one classify Sweet Black Angel? Doesn't really matter as this song bridges the entire album.

I'd say SBA is more than subtly caribbean-flavoured musically.

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DandelionPowderman

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Chris Fountain
It's agreed that Sweet Virginia, Torn and Frayed, etc.. are country oriented songs.


How would one classify Sweet Black Angel? Doesn't really matter as this song bridges the entire album.

I'd say SBA is more than subtly caribbean-flavoured musically.

It's actually kind of like mento, a very sweet sounding Jamaican music that was especially popular from the 30s to the 50s.

Here's a wiki description.

Mento is a style of Jamaican folk music that predates and has greatly influenced ska and reggae music. Mento typically features acoustic instruments, such as acoustic guitar, banjo, hand drums, and the rhumba box — a large mbira in the shape of a box that can be sat on while played.

Yes, that's one off the EOMS album that I like most...I really wish the album could've been cut down to 10 or 12 most memorable tracks (including 'Sweet Virginia') with maybe one or two live cuts.

Great country feel, love that key line in the chorus.

so absolutely authentic sounding, it makes you realize how good they are at what they do.

think of every 'great band', Beatles, Led Zeppelin, the Who, The Kinks, not one of them could come up with a song like this, never mind do a song like this.

It makes you realize that observations like, the Beatles are better than the Stones are completely meaningless. Better at what?

There are other bands that could probably do this song, and make it sound as authentic, but could they also do Miss You, Let's Spend The Night Together, Undercover Of The Night, and Sympathy For The Devil?

When I bought Exile in 72 S.V. was one of my fave songs on it. Still is . .

Love this song. Has my favorite Bobby Keys solo.

More than just a solo, it's like Bobby is playing "the Mick Taylor part" throughout the song (see Jiving Sister Fanny for an example). A few fills at first, then a solo, then playing out with the band.

And Stu's great too.

Excellent groove.

Too bad someone didn't give the lyrics a little more work - it could have been a radio hit, which would have made it one of the warhorses. Imagine getting to hear this every show...

-R

Yeah, the lyrics are flip city!
But it's all perfect anyway.