When working in a band as long as Keith Richards has, it’s easy to fall into a certain rhythm in the rehearsal room. Although it takes Richards the same time to write a song as it takes most of us to make a decent lunch, he has always been searching for that one extra element that has the potential to break your heart or move that one extra spot in your gut whenever you hear it. Given how long Richards has been doing it, his bullshit detector has also been known to work overtime, even when it comes to the band’s classics.
Throughout the group’s glory years, though, Richards was happy to make songs that could find a home on the charts. While the group first gave away their hit songs to other acts, it wasn’t until Richards and Mick Jagger hit songs like ‘Satisfaction’ that they found a formula that would work for The Rolling Stones.
By adding a great deal of menace to their traditional blues-infused roots, Richards started to sculpt the very beginnings of the hard rock guitar riff, including making his first stabs at open tunings on albums like Beggars Banquet. As any good songwriter knows, the writer’s quality can also come from how well they can deliver a ballad.
Getting their start writing the song ‘As Tears Go By’ for Marianne Faithfull, Richards would eventually mould himself into one of the most jaded balladeers in the business. Compared to the earnest tone that Jagger had in his voice, Richards’ croon was a bit rough around the edges, adding a great deal of emotion when spitting out the lyrics to a song like ‘Coming Down Again’ or ‘You Got The Silver’.
When assembling their latest song about heartache, though, Jagger had the perfect lyrics for what would become ‘Angie’. Named after David Bowie’s wife, Jagger was singing from a deeply personal place, only for Richards to call out the song for having a slightly dull title to hook the listener in.
Although Richards would be happy with how the song came out, he wasn’t at all impressed to see the song’s title on the lyric sheet, telling 50 Licks, “Sometimes you have a hook, a phrase or a word or a name or something which maybe you don’t even intend to keep. A classic example is ‘Angie,’ it was just a working title, like who’s going to call a song ‘Angie,’ how boring, another chick’s name you know?”.
Even though the song may have had a weak title to wrap everything around, that’s not to say that the rest of the song was lacking in substance. Compared to the open-tuned ballads they had been used to writing, Richards turned in one of the most inventive chord sequences of his career on this song, playing around with the tonal centre of the song now and again to keep the listener on their toes.
For all of the adventurous music going on below, it’s never at the disservice of the song, with Jagger delivering a perfect melody about a couple persevering even when times seem to be at their darkest. Given how much emotional weight is tied to the song, making the title so simple may have been the only way to bring the song across effectively.
