This awesome article stolen from Bill Burnett’s Song Mine He also has many other great articles that may be of interest also so go give his site a visit. He’s a far better writer than I am so read on.
At a recent carnival event at my six year old’s day school a band of mostly fellow dads in their 40s and 50s got up todo a set of classic rock, and the second song up in their set was Brown Sugar by the? Rolling Stones! I went “What? They’re doing this song for the kiddies?” Cuz you know I’ve always had a somewhat troubled inner discussion about this song. On the one hand it is a brilliant, can’t-sit-still-unless-you’re-dead rock n roll masterpiece. ?On the other hand it’s about women being sold in the market down in New Orleans and a scarred old slaver doin’ alright, whipping the women just around midnight. ?I mean really, what was Mick Jagger thinking when he wrote this? ?Give it a listen on this exellent youtube post from nowhereman76, who went beyond the call of youtube duty and found THREE versions of Brown Sugar, as well as some excellent commentary. Listen, and read the commentary Nowhereman put in, and then we’ll talk some more…
Brown Sugar ? Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields,
Sold in a market down in new orleans.
Scarred old slaver know hes doin alright.
Hear him whip the women just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should
A-huh.
Drums beating, cold english blood runs hot,
Lady of the house wondrin where its gonna stop.
House boy knows that hes doin alright.
You should a heard him just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a black girl should
A-huh.
I bet your mama was a tent show queen, and all her boy
Friends were sweet sixteen.
Im no schoolboy but I know what I like,
You should have heard me just around midnight.
Ah brown sugar how come you taste so good
(a-ha) brown sugar, just like a young girl should.
I said yeah, I said yeah, I said yeah, I said
Oh just like a, just like a black girl should.
I said yeah, I said yeah, I said yeah, I said
Oh just like, just like a black girl should.
Okay, first of all let me say that I think Mick and Keith get way too little credit as songwriters. So much attention is paid to their showmanship, their carousing, their blood transfusions and drug use and sexcapades, that very little thought is put to their songwriting. But they’re up there with the best, and part of their brilliance is that they have hidden excellent songwriting inside and behind “the greatest rock band in the world.” Rolling Stones songs roll by like big party machines and you barely notice the poetry, and the astounding chordal and melodic and rhythmic mastery. They are among the masters of an art form, and people who say the Stones are too old and ought to stop touring are idiots.
So, back to this song. Described by rock critic Robert Christgau as “a rocker so compelling that it discourages exegesis”–well, I know what he means, but I think Brown Sugar deserves a little exegesis. I reject totally the idea that Mick and Keith, who glorified and idolized black musicians and black culture, and went out of their way to revitalize the stature of such American masters as Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf could possibly be simplistic racist, sadomasochistic sex maniacs, which would be one interpretation of the song. I also reject the notion that it’s about a kind of heroin, or a DJ, or even that it’s “about” a black backup singer Mick had an affair with. Instead, I think this song reveals and revels in the secret awe that whites have felt for blacks throughout the tragic history of Africans in America. The fulcrum line for me is Drums beating, cold English blood runs hot, lady of the house wondrin where it’s gonna stop. Yeah. That’s it right there. We kidnapped dark-skinned Africans and used them like beasts, to build our empire, plow our fields, create our economy. But even then those scarred old slavers recognized the power their chattel held. The answer, for the lady of the house, was: It wasn’t going to stop. Blacks became the center, the beating heart of our culture–particularly musical culture. (Combined, interestingly enough, with the mournful wail and classical sophistication of the Eastern European Jews…two cultures with slavery as a central part of their history.)
So when Mick, speculating on the ancestry of his modern black lover, sings I bet your mama was a tent show queen he is musing about how the heck this incredible woman he just made love to came to be there. Thomas Jefferson felt the same thing Mick is singing about, and sired children with the slave Sally Hemmings, and this song could be about him. Gives the whole idea of “founding fathers” a new meaning, no? I remember once talking to Suzy Williams about this subject–what the heck was going on in the lyrics of Brown Sugar? And Suzy said “I think it’s just the Stones tellin’ it like it is.” Yup. Telling it like it is, like nobody else would ever dream of doing. Slavery–it’s got a good beat, and you can dance to it. And haven’t we all been dancing to it for all these years? Thank god at last, in the age of Obama, we can see the end of slavery, and the beginning of real equality.
By the way, in the second version of the song in the above youtube, check out the use of spoons as a rhythm instrument! It’s during I think the first solo. Very prominent spoons on one side of the stereo. What an amazing arrangement choice.
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Keith Richards tells the stories behind his 10 all-time-favorite Rolling Stones riffs:
Satisfaction
When I wrote the song, I didn’t think of that particular riff as the big guitar riff. That all fell into place at RCA [recording studio in L.A.] when Gibson dumped on me one of those first Fuzz-Tone pedals. I actually thought of that guitar line as a horn riff. The way Otis Redding ended up doing it is probably closer to my original conception for the song. It’s an obvious horn riff. And when this new Fuzz Tone pedal arrived in the studio from the local dealership or something, I said, “Oh, this is good. It’s got a bit of sustain, so I can use it to sketch out the horn line.” So we left the track and went back out on the road. And two weeks later I hear it on the radio. I said, “No, that was just a demo!” They said, “No, it’s a hit.” At least Otis got it right. Our version was a demo for Otis.
Mother’s Little Helper
The main riff is a 12-string with a slide on it. It’s played slightly Orientalish. This was even before sitars were used in rock music. It just needed something to make it twang, ’cause otherwise the song was quite vaudeville in a way. And it was just one of those things where somebody walked in with it and we went, “Look, it’s an electric 12-string.” It was just some gashed-up job. God knows where it came from or where it went, but I put it together with a bottleneck and we had a riff that tied the whole song together. There’s probably some gypsy influence in there somewhere.
Paint it Black
Brian [Jones, Rolling Stones founder and Richards' original coguitarist] got into the sitar and used it on a few things, like “Paint It Black.” I found it an interesting instrument, the idea of the sympathetic strings underneath that resonate to the strings on top. But as far as actually playing it-leave that to the Indians. There’s just something about the strings; they were too thin. But Brian loved to dodge around and play dulcimers, mandolins… things like that. [Former bassist] Bill Wyman was also instrumental to the sound of “Paint It Black” by adding the organ pedals. That song is another one of those semi-gypsy melodies we used to come up with back then. I don’t know where they come from. Must be in the blood.
Keith Richards - Rock Royalty
Jumping Jack Flash
“Jumping Jack Flash” comes from this guy, Jack Dyer, who was my gardener-an old English yokel. Mick and I were in my house down in the south of England. We’d been up all night; the sky was just beginning to go gray. It was pissing down raining, if I remember rightly. Mick and I were sitting there, and suddenly Mick starts up. He hears these great footsteps, these great rubber boots-slosh, slosh, slosh-going by the window. He said. “What’s that?” And I said, “Oh, that’s Jack. That’s jumpin’ Jack.” We had my guitar in open tuning, and I started to fool around with that. [singing] “Jumpin’ Jack…” and Mick says, “Flash.” He’d just woken up. And suddenly we had this wonderful alliterative phrase. So he woke up and we knocked it together.
On the record, I played a Gibson Hummingbird [acoustic] tuned to either open E or open D with a capo. And then I added another [acoustic] guitar over the top, but tuned to Nashville tuning [tuned like a 12-string guitar without the lower octave strings]. I learned that from somebody in George Jones’ band, in San Antonio in ‘63. We happened to be playing the World Teen Fair together. This guy in a Stetson and cowboy boots showed me how to do it, with the different strings, to get that high ring. I was picking up tips.
Sympanthy for the Devil
Mick brought that to the studio as a very Bob Dylanish kind of folk guitar song, and it ended up as a damned samba. I think that’s the strength of the Stones: give them a song half raw and they’ll cook it.
Street Fighting Man
When we went in the studio, we just couldn’t reproduce the sound of the original demo I did on cassette. So we played the cassette through an extension speaker and I played along with it-we just shoved a microphone into an acoustic and overdubbed it onto the track from the cassette. Then we put it on a four-track, played it back, and at the same time the guitar was going on, I had [session keyboard great] Nicky Hopkins playing a bit of piano and Charlie [Watts, drums] just shuffling in the background. Then we put drums on it and added another guitar while he was doing that, and we just kept layering it.
At that time I was into really compressing the acoustic guitar by running it through the early Phillips and Norelco cassette recorders and really overloading them. They came with a little plastic mic and I’d slam that right down into the acoustic guitar. I did that on “Jumping Jack Flash,” too. With all of those songs, I wanted the drive and dryness of an acoustic guitar, but I still wanted to distort it.
On “Street Fighting Man,” there’s one six-string and one five-string acoustic. They’re both in open tunings, but then there’s a lot of capo work. There are lots of layers of guitars on “Street Fighting Man,” so it’s difficult to say what you’re hearing on there. ‘Cause I tried eight different guitars, and which ones were used in the final version I couldn’t say.
Gimmie Shelter
That was done on some nameless Australian full-bodied acoustic [a Maton]. It looked like a copy of the Gibson model that Chuck Berry used. The thing had all been revarnished and painted out, but it just sounded great. Some guy crashed out at my pad for a couple of days, then suddenly split in a hurry and left that guitar behind, like, “take care of this for me.” I certainly did. At the very last note of the take, the whole neck fell off. You can hear it on the original track. That guitar had just that one little quality for that specific thing. In a way, it was quite poetic that it died at the end of the track.
Can’t You Hear Me Knocking
On that song, my fingers just landed in the right place and I discovered a few things about that [five-string, open G] tuning that I’d never been aware of. I think I realized that even as I was cutting the track. And then that jam at the end-we didn’t even know they were still taping. We thought we’d finished. We were just rambling and they kept the tape rolling. It was only when we heard the playback we realized: “Oh they kept it going. Okay, fade it out there… no wait, a little bit more, a bit more…” Basically, we realized we had two bits of music: there’s the song and there’s the jam.
Miss You
That was basically Mick’s song. He said, “Let’s try this disco shit out.” I think he’d been to too many nightclubs, actually. The guitar riff basically suggested itself from the melody Mick was singing. I just shadowed that and ran it behind the voice. It’s just a piece of fun, that song. It can get really funky if you get the right tempo and slam it in. Basically, you’re sitting on Charlie on that.
Start Me Up
I was convinced that was a reggae song. Everybody else was convinced of that. “It’s reggae, man.” We did 45 takes like that. But then on a break I just played that guitar riff, not even really thinking much about it; we did a take rocking away and then went back to work and did another 15 reggae takes. Five years later, Mick discovered that one rock take in the middle of the tape and realized how good it was. The fact that I missed “Start Me Up” for five years is one of my disappointments. It just went straight over my head. But you can’t catch everything.
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Rolling Stones classic wakes grandfather from coma
A 60-year-old grandfather woke up from a 10-week coma after his favorite Rolling Stones song was blared into his ears.
By Chris Irvine
Last Updated: 3:04PM BST 07 Aug 2008
Sam Carter lost consciousness after contracting severe anemia but was brought back to life when “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” was blared into his ears.
The anthem was the first single the retired baker from Stoke in Staffordshire ever bought, released in 1965 when he was just 17.
Despite only being given a 30 per cent chance of survival, he woke from his coma after his wife Eva, 65, took the doctor’s advice and played him his favorite tunes through a set of earphones.
After three days of listening to the local Stoke station Signal 2, his eyes opened as soon as he heard the sound of Mick Jagger’s vocals and Keith Richards’ guitar riff.
Sam said: “I can’t remember much from being in a coma, but I do remember that when that song came on it took me right back to when I was a youngster.
“I could remember how excited I was to get it down at the record shop.
“I suddenly had a burst of energy and knew I had a lot more life left in me and that’s when I woke up – to the sound of the first song I ever bought.”
Same, who has three children and six grandchildren, added: “I would love to thank Mick and the rest of the Stones personally – I feel they really did help wake me from my coma.”
Wife Eva said she had switched on the radio at Stoke’s City General Hospital in a last-ditch attempt to bring him back a fortnight ago, after growing increasingly frustrated with his lack of progress.
She said: “I didn’t really think it would work.
“I couldn’t believe it when he started opening his eyes and looked at me. It was like we had been given another chance.”
This is a clip of Mick Taylor formerly of the Rolling Stones playing a live acoustic show in Laguna Beach, CA on Sept. 21, 1993 at the Discovery Gallery of Music. He performed on a borrowed guitar and amplifier in a front of an audience of maybe 40 people.
The full video which runs 40 minutes long was shot by my friend Sheldon and has never been shown to anyone outside of his house. I have the only copy available recorded straight to DVD from his old VHS tape that has sat on his shelve for past 15 years.
I gotta say it’s not Mick Taylor’s best work as a solo artist. However for Mick Taylor and Rolling Stones fans this is still a real treat to see him play at a small gallery in such an intimate setting.
Just sharing a couple of shots I took of the Rolling Stones from Houston, Texas at the Astrodome in 1981. I have a couple more I’ll dig up and add later. Although I was really close it was hard to get a good picture because it was so hot and humid in there my lens kept fogging up. Being one off the boards from the stage it was so packed I could barely move to wipe the lens so not many good pics came out.
May 5th, 2009 | 
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