The first song Ronnie Wood wrote for The Rolling Stones
Ronnie Wood had a relationship with The Rolling Stones that predated his actual membership in the band. As one of many colourful characters floating around the British rock scene of the 1960s, Wood initially made his name playing with the Jeff Beck Group and the Faces. As the latter band was splitting apart in 1974, Wood began working on his first solo album, I’ve Got My Own Album to Do.
To help him out, Wood recruited his old friend Mick Taylor, who was secretly just a few weeks away from leaving The Rolling Stones. Along with Taylor, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards also tagged along to help out. Wood had helped Jagger write and record the basis for ‘It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll’, and the Stones paid him back by including two Jagger/Richards songs – ‘Act Together’ and ‘Sure The One You Need’ – on the LP.
After Taylor’s departure, the Stones used the recording of 1975’s Black and Blue to audition potential replacements. Jeff Beck, Wayne Perkins, and Harvey Mandel were all considered or contributed to the album in some form, but the job was always Wood’s to take. Most notably, Wood came up with the riff that would eventually evolve into ‘Hey Negrita’.
“That number came about from Keith and I in a hotel, you know… idea swaps,” Wood recalled in 1982. “And it eventually came around to, ‘What was that one you were working on, Woody?’ So I thought, ‘Oh, great, here’s my chance.’ I immediately made up this riff.”
“All of us, independently and together, were into reggae, and it was also a mood of the time,” Wood remembered in 2003. “I had this particular lick that I took into the studio and the others said, ‘What are we going to start with?’ and I said, ‘I’ve got this song.’”
“Charlie was sitting behind his kit, so he was already into it and then Keith and Mick both got into the motion of it. That was ‘Hey Negrita’, which came together very easily. The key to getting a song across in this band is never to try and write all the words. If you’ve got the rhythm, you’re lucky! Let Mick write the words and then you’re in with a chance.”
The track was another in a long line of racially suggestive works from the Stones. “‘Hey Negrita.’ It’s a compliment. I mean, it’s not a put down,” Jagger wondered in 1976. “I mean, what’s the problem, the ‘Hey’ part? No, I think they will get past. What, you think coloured people won’t like it? Well… only the most sensitive ones. It’s about South Americans, that’s just what you say, you know? You say, hey negrita… one negri… negrota… you say to a lady one, a lady negress… hey negrita! In fact, it’s been done, been said to my old lady, you see?”
Check out ‘Hey Negrita’ down below.
