This is interesting. Guitar World recently re-printed a 2005 interview with Keith Richards, in which he discusses the stories behind some of the top Rolling Stones tunes, as well as how he came up with some of the more memorable guitar riffs.
For example, he notes that he (and the rest of the band) originally planned to record 'Start Me Up' as a reggae tune:
“It’s reggae, man.” We did 45 takes like that. But then on a break I
just played that guitar riff, not
even really thinking much about it;
we did a take rocking away and then went back to work and did another
15 reggae takes. Five years later, Mick discovered that one rock take
in the middle of the tape and realized how good it was.
In one of the funnier quotes, Richards talks about how 'Miss You' came about:
That was basically Mick’s song. He said, “Let’s try this disco shit
out.” I think he’d been to too many nightclubs, actually. The guitar
riff basically suggested itself from the melody Mick was singing. I
just shadowed that and ran it behind the voice. It’s just a piece of
fun, that song. It can get really funky if you get the right tempo and
slam it in.
This is an interesting read for Stones fans, and also for guitar players, who might be interested to know that the success of 'Satisfaction' was largely due to a fuzz effects pedal:
When I wrote the song, I didn’t think of that particular riff as the big guitar riff. That all fell into place at RCA when Gibson dumped on me one of those first Fuzz-Tone pedals. I actually thought of that guitar line as a horn riff...when this new Fuzz Tone pedal arrived in the studio from the local dealership or something, I said, “Oh, this is good. It’s got a bit of sustain..."
Hope you enjoy!
Geo2
