We don’t often hear Mick Jagger provide an in-depth breakdown of a Stones song. But that’s exactly what he – with the help of producer Andrew Watt – has done on a new Behind The Song video for Variety.
It’s not about an old classic, but Mr Charm from the current Foreign Tongues album.
Apparently, the track started from a riff that Jagger asked keyboard player Matt Clifford to add a beat to. The singer then recorded a demo that he shared with Keith Richards: “Then my riff is still in the song. It’s not the dominant riff of the song anymore, because Keith came up with a really good riff.
"He made it so much better. So that’s his job, ha ha!”
“I think it’s really amazing how Keith hears grooves,” adds Watt, playing the bassline that the guitarist came up with for the song. “It wasn’t what the demo was. He’s turned it into something else.”
One of the most fascinating parts of the breakdown is where Watt talks about how Keith and Ronnie Wood’s guitar parts complement each other. “In this song in particular, (you can hear) the thing that they do so well, when they’re weaving together and listening to each other and responding to each other is alive and well.”
“Ronnie’s guitar part came from hearing Keith’s riff,” the producer says, before playing the guitarists’ isolated parts.
Steve Winwood guests on the track, playing his Hammond B-3 and Watt remembers the ex-Traffic man bringing in some congas into the studio that Jimmy Miller – producer of the Stones run of classic albums in the late 60s and early 70s – had gifted him.
The pair then get talking about percussion and Jagger - looking more spry than an 83-year-old has any right to - recalls how he was taught to play maracas by Bo Diddley’s player Jerome Green.
Anyway, it’s an intriguing look at one of the new album’s standouts, and up on YouTube now.
