The number of hits The Rolling Stones have crafted throughout the last 60 years is almost impossible to compute. While the band endured some dry patches throughout their long career, there have been extended periods in which The Stones have been firing on all cylinders, and even Keith Richards struggles to explain how they landed upon such greatness.
When The Rolling Stones begin working on a track in the studio, their first vision of the creation doesn’t always align with the finished product. While they are busy at work, often, their ideas change, and the song ends up sounding like a completely different track by the time it reaches completion. There’s no greater example of this than ‘Start Me Up’, which Richards refers to as a “miracle” and started life as a reggae song.
Initially, the Stones planned for ‘Start Me Up’ to be released as a track on their 1978 album Some Girls. However, they were unhappy with the takes and left it off the final cut. As far as they were concerned, ‘Start Me Up’ was inadequate and would never be heard by the general public, but unexpectedly, this all changed.
“The story here is the miracle that we ever found that track,” Richards later said of the track. “I was convinced – and I think Mick was – that it was definitely a reggae song. And we did it in 38 takes – ‘Start me up. Yeah, man, cool. You know, you know, Jah Rastafari.’ And it didn’t make it. And somewhere in the middle of a break, just to break the tension, Charlie and I hit the rock and roll version. And right after that we went straight back to reggae.”
Richards added: “And we forgot totally about this one little burst in the middle, until about five years later when somebody sifted all the way through these reggae takes. After doing about 70 takes of ‘Start Me Up’ he found that one in the middle. It was just buried in there. Suddenly I had it. Nobody remembered cutting it.”
The guitarist concluded: “But we leapt on it again. We did a few overdubs on it, and it was like a gift, you know? One of the great luxuries of The Stones is we have an enormous, great big can of stuff. I mean what anybody hears is just the tip of an iceberg, you know. And down there is vaults of stuff. But you have to have the patience and the time to actually sift through it.”
The rock ‘n’ roll version of ‘Start Me Up’ was elected as the lead single for The Rolling Stones’ 1981 album Tattoo You and became a huge international hit for the band. In another universe, if Richards and Watts didn’t decide to mess around during the song’s original recording, they’d have never resurrected one of the most beloved tracks they’ve ever released. As Richards rightly stated, ‘Start Me Up’ is a “miracle”.
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