Watch The Rolling Stones perform Mick Jagger’s least favourite song, ‘Dead Flowers’
Featured on Sticky Fingers, ‘Dead Flowers’ appears alongside some of the greatest songs The Rolling Stones ever produced, including ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’, ‘Wild Horses’, ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking?’ and ‘Brown Sugar’. Like those tracks, ‘Dead Flowers’ sees the Stones conjure up the warmth and vitality of American roots music. Although, according to Jagger, the song always suited Keith’s voice more than it did his. Judging from this footage of Jagger and the band performing the track live at The Marquee in 1971, I’m inclined to agree.
In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger confessed that he’d always found ‘Dead Flowers’ difficult to perform. “I love country music, but I find it very hard to take it seriously,” he began. “I also think a lot of country music is sung with the tongue in cheek, so I do it tongue-in-cheek. The harmonic thing is very different from the blues. It doesn’t bend notes in the same way, so I suppose it’s very English, really. Even though it’s been very Americanized, it feels very close to me, to my roots, so to speak.”
By the time The Stones recorded ‘Dead Flowers’ for Sticky Fingers, their contract with Decca Records had ended, meaning the band were finally able to release their albums – cover art included – as they saw fit. Their enthusiasm was quashed somewhat when they discovered that their departing manager, the infinitely crooked Allen Klein, had signed over their 1960s American copyrights to his company ABKCO. They would never forgive him, not even after his death in 2009.
Ahead of the release of Sticky Fingers, The Rolling Stones embarked on their first tour since 1966. The supporting tour for the forthcoming album had already concluded, but The Stones wanted to bid farewell to London and to England before leaving the country as tax exiles on April 1st. They chose the Marquee Club as their venue, which had started its life as one of the city’s premier jazz hubs before transforming into a breeding ground for young rhythm and blues bands like The Yardbirds, The Animals and The Rolling Stones in the ’60s. Where better to say goodbye than where it all began?
The Stones would record the performance and later release it as The Marquee Club (Live In 1971), successfully preserving one of the band’s greatest setlists, from opening number ‘Live With Me’ to set-closer ‘Brown Sugar’.
Make sure you check out their performance of ‘Dead Flowers’ below.
