The unlikely inspiration behind The Rolling Stones’ final number one
Whichever way you look at it, ‘Miss You’ was either the start or the end of an era for The Rolling Stones. The 1978 chart-topper helped ensure that the Stones could adapt to new musical styles and continue make hit records for as long as they wanted. But it also signalled the end of their two-decade-long run as pop music titans, with the disco-inspired track being the final number one song of the band’s career.
“It was ‘Aah, Mick’s been to the disco and has come out humming some other song,’” Keith Richards recalled about the song’s initial creation. “Mick spent [many nights] at Studio 54 and coming up with that beat, that four on the floor. And he said, ‘Add the melody to the beat.’ We just thought we’d put our oar in on Mick wanting to do some disco shit, keep the man happy. But as we got into it, it became quite an interesting beat. And we realized, maybe we’ve got a quintessential disco thing here.”
“Disco was [in the air] when ‘Miss You’ came around,” Ronnie Wood would later say. “We didn’t get together and say, ‘Let’s make a disco song.’ It was a rhythm that was popular and so we made a song like that.”
Charlie Watts recalls that he and Jagger would often visit discos together and were becoming increasingly influenced by the artists of the genre. In fact, Watts recalled that one song was particularly responsible for sparking the initial inspiration for ‘Miss You’: ‘Y.M.C.A.’ by the Village People.
“A lot of those songs like ‘Miss You’ were heavily influenced by going to the discos. You can hear it in a lot of those four on the floor rhythms and the Philadelphia-style drumming,” Watts explained. “Mick and I used to go to discos a lot. A great way to hear a dance record is by listening to it in a dance hall or disco — I used to go to dance halls to look at the drummers when I was a kid. It was a great period. I remember being in Munich and coming back from a club with Mick singing one of the Village People songs – ‘Y.M.C.A.’, I think it was – and Keith went mad, but it sounded great on the dance floor.”
Despite being undeniably influenced by the disco genre, there were hesitations from inside the band. Some Girls had notable forays into both punk and country music, giving the album a varied sound. Richards was the most resistant to going full disco for ‘Miss You’, but after the band managed to record ‘Miss You’ without losing their signature rock edge, Jagger insisted that the final result was far from true disco.
“‘Miss You’ wasn’t disco disco,” Jagger later insisted. “Disco records at that time didn’t have guitars much, and they all had shimmering string lines and oo-eeoo-ee girls. It was influenced by it, but not it. I like that.”
Check out ‘Miss You’ down below.
