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35love
Turner we posted same time. I am learning sharing personal lyric interpretations is like when someone says: 'hey want to hear about this dream I had last night? it was so weird'
NO don't want to hear about your dream your mind is thinking loudly, LOL.
Keith figured it out early: don't ever reveal or discuss lyric content meanings. could ruin it for others....
still fun sometimes tho.
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Turner68Quote
35love
Turner we posted same time. I am learning sharing personal lyric interpretations is like when someone says: 'hey want to hear about this dream I had last night? it was so weird'
NO don't want to hear about your dream your mind is thinking loudly, LOL.
Keith figured it out early: don't ever reveal or discuss lyric content meanings. could ruin it for others....
still fun sometimes tho.
i agree, but naturalist asked and i am always happy to do him a solid!
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Naturalust
Although I sheepishly admit I sometimes change the words in Dead Flowers from "I'll be in my basement room, with a needle and a spoon" to "I'll be in my basement room, with my mandolin and a tune".
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swiss
Musically I love this song -- and I have always imagined those Dominique Tarle's photos of Keith and Gram at the piano and in the window seat and at the table to be playing around with this song, as well as Sweet Virginia, and myriad country songs (which KR now implies he already knew and did not learn from Gram but at the knee of Doris when he was a toddler, in Under the Influence, but I digress). I appreciate the vibe of the song, the end-of-the-night swaying swing, how melodic it is, the performances.
Lyrically...I'm kinda of a mind with Come On and 35love, as well as whitem8 (glorious gorgeous post, man - I forgot you were such an amazing writer!). The lyrics are so vivid and evocative as to be repellent, to me. It is an almost impossibly unvarnished portrayal of the filthy down vibe and I make sure not to feel "bound" by it. I don't think 35love's interpretation is that far off. But, then again, I love hearing people's dreams
I feel (not saying I think, even) that Keith is acknowledging that when people get close to him (at that time) he has a way of binding them to him and dragging them way underwater/underground. Thing is: he can hold his breath longer than most anyone. To me, "wind and he's bound" has sounded like when you first hook a fish, wind the reel...and he's caught.
But, like most things Keith, the narrative isn't literal or linear, and doesn't sit still for long, so the "he" is all over the place--who it is, who's the protagonist, who's the observer and the observed.
Not my favorite Stones song, by any means--or even on Exile, or even on Side 2. But a masterful well-crafted, dirty, filthy piece.
- swiss
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NICOS
Comments, input and alterations are very welcome!
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Torn And Frayed
Written by: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Recorded: December 1971-March 1972 Sunset Sound Studios, Los Angeles, USA
Lead vocal: Mick Jagger
Acoustic guitar: Keith Richards
Electric guitar: Keith Richards
Bass: Mick Taylor
Drums: Charlie Watts
Pedal steel guitar: Al Perkins
Harmony vocal: Keith Richards
Background vocals: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Piano: Nicky Hopkins
Organ: Jim Price
Torn And Frayed
Hey, let him follow you down
Way underground, wind and he's bound
Bound to follow you down
Just a dead beat right off the street
Bound to follow you down
Well the ballrooms and smelly bordellos
And dressing rooms filled with parasites
Onstage the band has got problems
They're a bag of nerves on first nights
He ain't tied down to no hometown
Yeah, and you thought he was reckless
You think he's bad, he thinks you're mad
Yeah, and the guitar player gets restless
Well his coat is torn and frayed
It's seen much better days
Just as long as the guitar plays
Let it steal your heart away
Steal your heart away
Well his coat is torn and frayed
It's seen much better days
Just as long as the guitar plays
Let it steal your heart away
Joe's got a cough, sounds kind of rough
Yeah, and the codeine to fix it
Doctor prescribes, drugstore supplies
Who's going to help him to kick it?
And his coat is torn and frayed
It's seen much better days
Just as long as the guitar plays
Let it steal your heart away
Steal your heart away
And his coat is torn and frayed
It's seen much better days
Just as long as the guitar plays
Just as long as the guitar plays
Just as long as the guitar plays
Just as long as the guitar plays
Produced by: Jimmy Miller
Chief engineers: Andy Johns & Joe Zagarino
First released on: The Rolling Stones double LP - Exile On Main Street
U.S. Release date: May 22, 1972
U.K. Release date: May 26, 1972
Label: Rolling Stones Records COC 69100
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buffalo7478
I saw you listed Al Perkins and I went to his site to learn more about him. The guy has played with many people from famous to the obscure, and lists a really long discography, but Exile is not part of it. He doesn't list any work with the Stones. Though he does list a highlight of his life as playing at a Gram Parsons Tribute with Keef.
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CMH516
Even though it's far from the best or best known song on Exile, there's something about the vibe of it that seems to perfectly encapsulate the album.
When I think of Exile, this is the first song that jumps to mind.
I wonder what kind of stuff Keith and Gram would have collaborated on in the future had Gram lived?
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Silver Dagger
I believe it was probably written after they arrived in LA in late 71.
Actually, come to think of it, does anybody know when the Stones decided that Exile would be a double album? How many songs did they leave Nellcote with and how many more did they write in LA. I'd love to know more about this period in their career.
I thought they had 8 or 9 songs recorded at Nellcote, and finished them in LA. The other songs were recorded at Micks house Cheyne Walk in England or Keith's house Redlands, also in England. They were recorded/written from 1969 onwards (Loving Cup for example, which they already played live at Hyde Park 1969)
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Hairball
Absolute 100% perfection.
That wobbly pedal steel is the absolute highest quality.
Piano, drums, vocals, backup vocals, lyrics, acoustic/electric guitars, and everything else - ditto - perfection.
I use to imagine Lynyrd Skynyrd covering this back in the '70's, and while it would have been great imo - it would have never equaled the Stones version.
Some of Skynyrd's tunes actually may have directly lifted a huge amount of inspiration from this among several other Stones tunes (Dead Flowers, etc.).
A cover of this would have fit nicely on any of their albums.
Time to revisit Exile now...
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whitem8
One of their most beautiful songs. Like much of Exile, it is a journey. A slow paddle through the bayou with a lovely forlorn jaundiced rock star. Shades of green around the cheeks. A skeletal gypsy with a guitar, syringe, and Berber jewelry jangling round his neck. Joe's got that cough, and is always looking for a new doctor to heal his ills. Lovely acoustics punctuated by Charlie's sublime drumming. Just forceful enough to keep the song moving forward and punctuated with expert snare shots to intro in the lovely pedal steel. A perfect snap shot of the life of a rock n roll star on the road. . . so many temptations, so much loss, and so much alienation from humanity. All encapsulated in a perfect alt country ballad of epic proportions. It is no wonder they could never replicate it effectively on stage. It is a mood piece and a biting diary entry that just can't be replicated. It was from the moment. A snapshot. Faded by time and memory and passion. Loose gravel on a road to perdition.
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Hairball
Absolute 100% perfection.
That wobbly pedal steel is the absolute highest quality.
Piano, drums, vocals, backup vocals, lyrics, acoustic/electric guitars, and everything else - ditto - perfection.
I use to imagine Lynyrd Skynyrd covering this back in the '70's, and while it would have been great imo - it would have never equaled the Stones version.
Some of Skynyrd's tunes actually may have directly lifted a huge amount of inspiration from this among several other Stones tunes (Dead Flowers, etc.).
A cover of this would have fit nicely on any of their albums.
Time to revisit Exile now...
Great point as LS had several similar sounding songs - I Never Dreamed, All I can Do Is Write About It, etc..
And I bet Mick could do a mean "Curtis Lowe"....
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GasLightStreet
The absurdity of Torn And Frayed is interesting.
Not as a song but... as a song.
Because they already had a huge amount of songs leftover from LET IT BLEED and STICKY FINGERS. If you were to go by what has been documented, within the reason of what it says, they only used SIX songs from Keith's basement.
On top of what they already had prior to France, they recorded, as far as anyone knows, THREE more songs in Los Angeles.
What I've always found interesting is that no one can tell.
The whole France recording thing, it seems at the time they had created a myth. Yet they recorded more later. And had a lot prior.
EXILE was not quite a TATTOO YOU but it certainly had elements of it. A lot of elements of adding to leftovers.