Best Stones Songs You've Never Heard, Part II

Anita Pallenberg

By 1968, Mick Jagger was a global superstar, which naturally led him to acting. For his cinematic debut, only the oddball British psychedelic crime noir of Performance could have worked. And what better leading lady than Keith Richards's girlfriend, mythical late 60's London scenester beauty, Anita Pallenberg? Only in the hyper sexual bizzaro world of the Rolling Stones could one man be working on a near X rated film, in the open, with his best friend's girl.

At some point during the Performance shoot, word got out that Jagger and Pallenberg were a bit too far ... in-character while shooting the love scenes. Richards did not take it well, and took to sitting in car in front of the studio while the two overheated actors "played their parts." Must have been awkward at band rehearsal the next day.

Thankfully, Jagger's affair with Pallenberg (do you even call it that when it's in the open?) wasn't the only thing going on Planet Stones at the time. Guitar legend Ry Cooder had shown on the scene, teaching Richards the open G and E Country Blues tuning that would burn in Let it Bleed era classics like "Honky Tonk Women," its deep fried cousin, "Country Honk," and Delta parable "Prodigal Son." Armed with Richard's searing arsenal of down home American licks, the Stones set about finishing the Country-Work fusion work that Buddy Holly and Carl Perkins had started a decade earlier. What we now call "alt country" can be traced back to the day Ry Cooder met Keith Richards.  

As being Rolling Stones is the only job either of them ever had, "Memo From Turner" must be the only memo that Mick Jagger or Keith Richards ever wrote. In the Stones saga, non-Stones tend to be transient presences. Thankfully, Ry Cooder stuck around long enough to pitch in on the "Turner" studio effort. While appearing on the Performance soundtrack as a Jagger song, the Jagger/Richards writing credit and the song's appearance on the 1989 London Years box set (where I found it) qualify it as Stones enough for this list (despite the fact that no Stones besides Jagger are heard on the recording). Cooder's sunny day driving slide line is the central theme here. Jagger gives dismissive vocal treatment to what sounds like an awkward conversation between Turner (a criminal in the Performance story played by Jagger in the film) and a stranger who recognizes him, to Turner's apparent chagrin. Despite, or perhaps because of, its sordid backstory, "Turner" is a charming piece of Stones obscurity.

Best Stones Songs You've Never Heard, Part I

Brian Jones, circa 1964

On the night of July 3, 1969, the Rolling Stones sat in Olympic Studios in London, working out a new track with freshly minted guitarist Mick Taylor. At about 2:00 a.m., the word reached them that founding member and original guitarist Brian Jones had been found dead in the pool at his Sussex home. Jones, who had been fired from the band and replaced by Taylor less than a month earlier, thus became a founding member of The 27 Club. The news literally dropped the Stones to the floor. Charlie Watts wept. Two days later, the Stones would play Hyde Park before a quarter million to memorialize their fallen mate.

On that fateful June night, the song the Stones were working up was an overhaul of Stevie Wonder's 1968 non-hit "I Don't Know Why." The song lyrics are rooted in confusion and pain, voiced by Rock's ever-present pleading lover. It must have served as an appropriate tableau for these young artists, their invincibility shattered. The result of their work does "I Don't Know's" R&B origins proud. The underwater vibrato opening sequence segues with immediate power into a Muscle Shoalsesque (the studio had opened earlier that year; the Stones would record there in December), brass and ivory accented theme that dominates the rest of the song. Taylor's presence is immediately felt, with a searing slide overlay that crackles the song's back half. Watts uses his snare like a conductor, setting off each of the song's mini-crescendos. Pain and exhaustion resonate in Jagger's voice as he pleads his way through the lines of a narrator resolved to defeat ("I ain't gonna stop, your cheating ways ..."). The put-on vocal tic in the third line is charming in its quirkiness. "I Don't Know Why" this little three minute heater never turned more ears.