“Couldn’t think of another”: The Rolling Stones song that was never supposed to make sense
There’s no right or wrong way for anyone to write lyrics. Someone can study the greats as much as possible, but the greatest single lines in rock history come from someone quoting their heart instead of rephrasing something everyone has heard a thousand times. And while The Rolling Stones have been master interpreters of their heroes over the years, their best moments have come from their thinking outside the box and making something extraordinary.
Then again, not every one of their songs had to be the deepest thing in the world. A lot of what Mick Jagger and Keith Richards churned out in the early days was about them trying to find their voices as songwriters, and that normally involved tunes that only had one objective behind them, even if it was solely to have a hit record.
Even when The Beatles gave them tunes, it’s not like ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ was an amazing feat of songwriting. The band could have been considered one-note by some people, but as they went on, ‘The Glimmer Twins’ found a way to work off each other by making music that had a clear point behind it.
After all, Bob Dylan had already knocked rock and roll on its ass when making his turn towards electric music, so it was only natural for The Stones to follow his lead. Anyone halfway interested in being a songwriter could learn a lot from Dylan, but Jagger was the last one willing to pull off a passable ‘Jack Frost’ impression, wiery frames aside. His stuff needed to be from the heart, and much of what turned up on Exile on Main St had to take a few years to be lived in before they were ready to put the tunes together.
Across the record, the band offered up a smorgasbord of everything they could do, whether that’s listening to old country songs on ‘Sweet Virginia’, going back to old blues covers on ‘Stop Breaking Down’ or making classic open-G licks sound immaculate on ‘Tumbling Dice’. But a double album of material means having a lot to say, and Richards remembers the band intentionally giving up towards the end of the sessions.
They only had a few more songs left to go, and since ‘Casino Boogie’ was too good to throw out, Richards said it was better to assemble words that sounded right, saying, “I think when we got to ‘Casino Boogie’, Mick and I looked at each other and just couldn’t think of another lyrical concept or idea for the song. I said to Mick, ‘You know how Bill Burroughs did that cut-up thing—where he would randomly chop words out of a book or newspaper and then try to sort them up?’ That’s how we did the lyrics for ‘Casino Boogie’.”
The result may not have been as cerebral as John Lennon on ‘I Am the Walrus’, but The Stones found a way to make every line work perfectly. Since Jagger is spitting the lyrics nonchalantly in some spots, it’s easy to glean a bit of poetry from every piece that’s said, whether it’s him mentioning Uncle Sam or not being able to speak after having too many late nights.
Making a cut like this may have been a cheap way to keep the ball rolling, but The Stones weren’t doing it to be lazy. Everyone needs to find inspiration from somewhere, and this was the moment where they felt comfortable throwing caution to the wind and letting their subconscious do the dirty work for them.
