When Keith Richards and Mick Jagger recreated the writing of ‘Honky Tonk Women’
‘Honky Tonk Women’ eventually became one of the most popular and emblematic songs ever written by The Rolling Stones. A souped-up blues rock number featuring Keith Richards’ iconic five-string open tuning and Charlie Watts’ rock-solid rhythms, ‘Honky Tonk Women’ went straight to number one in both the US and the UK in the summer of 1969.
But the most well-known version of the song isn’t how it was originally envisioned. While Richards and Mick Jagger were vacationing at a ranch in Sao Paulo, Brazil, the pair came up with a country song that would eventually morph into ‘Honky Tonk Women’. Before they laid down the single, the Stones recorded the stripped-back version of the track and released it on the album Let It Bleed as ‘Country Honk’.
For his part, Richards credits then-new guitarist Mick Taylor for turning ‘Country Honk’ into the rock arrangement that is known today. “The song was originally written as a real Hank Williams/Jimmie Rodgers/1930s country song,” Richards claimed in 1997. “And it got turned around to this other thing by Mick Taylor, who got into a completely different feel, throwing it off the wall another way.”
‘Country Honk’ had a slightly different set of lyrics and a completely different arrangement. The setting of the first verse was now Jackson, Mississippi, instead of Memphis, Tennessee. Richards plays an acoustic in standard tuning rather than picking up his Fender Telecaster in his signature open G. Richards and Jagger share charmingly ragged harmonies as violinist Byron Berline tootles out a fiddle line.
When the Stones returned to Brazil in 2016, the band decided to document the trip for a documentary entitled Olé Olé Olé!: A Trip Across Latin America. While once again in Sao Paulo, Jagger and Richards decided to recreate how they originally wrote ‘Country Honk’, with the two singing in harmony as Richards strums an acoustic guitar and Jagger blows on his harmonica.
The recreation was a somewhat surprising element of the documentary. Given the pair’s combustible relationship, it’s rare to get Jagger and Richards together in one place that isn’t the stage. But while sitting in a dressing room, the pair easily slip back into the friendship that has defined the Stones for decades. With smiles on their faces and an easy rapport between them, the pair gamely try to find the right vocal notes to make ‘Country Honk’ sound like the classic song it is. When they’re done, the two share a laugh as they state that it went “something like that”.
Check out Richards and Jagger recreating the original version of ‘Honky Tonk Women’ down below.
