Mick Jagger and Keith Richards sit locked in a kitchen, a guitar in hand and half of a song dancing on the tips of their tongue. There’s no time for bathroom breaks and to stretch their legs when hit songs need writing, and the two of them continue to put their heads together in a bid to create what they hope will be the next big hit. They ended up writing ‘As Tears Go By’.
While this environment might sound pretty extreme, it was a necessary step taken by their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, to get the band writing original material. Up until that moment, they had only ever recorded covers. The band were happy playing the likes of Muddy Waters, but Oldham knew if they were going to be big, they had to put something unique together.
Keith Richards has since admitted that ‘As Tears Go By’ was nothing like the sound they were going for, but he was happy for the harsh writing environment as it forced them to finish their first song, which paved the way for the rest of the band’s career. “When you start writing, it doesn’t matter where the first one comes from,” he said, “You’ve got to start somewhere, right?”
From that point on, the creative doors were well and truly kicked off the hinges, as The Rolling Stones were suddenly confident songwriters with a variety of different topics that they wanted to write about. When you flick through their discography, there are plenty of different subjects glossed over, such as drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll, as well as more serious ones like politics.
In the midst of all of this versatility, however, there remains this ability to draw from their surroundings to craft something unique. In the same way they did from the kitchen when writing ‘As Tears Go By’, The Rolling Stones also took from another cramped and depressing area when writing their track ‘Ventilator Blues’.
The band didn’t stay in Great Britain when making their album Exile On Main St because the tax implications of doing so were too great. Instead, as the title suggests, they exiled themselves and wound up settling in France. While they enjoyed the country, it proved difficult to work there as they were suddenly working in studios that didn’t suit their needs. Getting back into the rhythm they were used to proved tricky, and subsequently, they found themselves writing music in the basement of the villa Keith Richards was renting.
It did the job in terms of being a good room to write music in, but it was hardly the most hospitable environment for the band. The songwriting on the record seems to reflect these less-than-ideal surroundings, and the track ‘Ventilator Blues’ is a wonderful example. It highlights how difficult it was to write in the stuffy basement that the band had decided to call home for a while.
Maybe Oldham locking the band in a kitchen early in their career was a stroke of genius, as it meant they could adapt and write great music, no matter how dire the environment.