The Rolling Stones song that means “a thousand different things”
‘Midnight Rambler’ is one of the most sinister rock and roll songs ever cut to vinyl. When The Rolling Stones leaders Mick Jagger and Keith Richards penned the track, they were in one of the calmest and most picturesque locations in the world: Positano, Italy. Famous for its cliffside houses near the waters of the Mediterranean Sea, Jagger and Richards somehow found the dark and gritty inspiration to write the tale of a serial killer.
“That’s a song Keith and I really wrote together. We were on a holiday in Italy,” Jagger recalled in a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone. “In this very beautiful hill town, Positano, for a few nights. Why we should write such a dark song in this beautiful, sunny place, I really don’t know. We wrote everything there – the tempo changes, everything. And I’m playing the harmonica in these little cafes, and there’s Keith with the guitar”.
The real-life inspiration behind the song was Albert DeSalvo, the titular Boston Strangler that gets name-checked in the lyrics. DeSalvo’s rampage claimed the lives of 13 women across the Boston area throughout the 1960s. The murders had ceased for over half a decade by the time Jagger and Richards found enough inspiration to pen ‘Midnight Rambler’, but the song was unmistakably directly inspired by DeSalvo’s crimes.
That was the case until Richards threw some doubt onto the lyrics. In a contemporary interview from 1971, Richards was a bit more coy about the song’s origins. Whether he was attempting to divert attention away from the gruesome actions of DeSanto or simply not wanting to fan the flames of violence, Richards threw most of the lyrical content onto Jagger and claimed that the lyrics were open to interpretation.
“Usually when you write, you just kick Mick off on something and let him fly on it, just let it roll out and listen to it and start to pick up on certain words that are coming through, and it’s built up on that,” Richards told Rolling Stone in 1971.
Adding: “A lot of people still complain they can’t hear the voice properly. If the words come through it’s fine, if they don’t, that’s all right too, because anyway that can mean a thousand different things to anybody”.
Check out ‘Midnight Rambler’ and take whatever interpretation you feel out of the lyrics.
