Honky Tonk Women (1969)- The Rolling Stones

There are familiar electric, riff-based hit singles, then there is This ONE. Honky Tonk Women was described by Rolling Stone magazine as ‘likely the strongest three minutes of rock and roll yet released in 1969‘. It is distinctive as it opens not with a guitar riff but with a beat played on a cowbell. This is the third song by The Rolling Stones to be presented here and their second from 1969 after Gimme Shelter. Most of the information in this article is cherry-picked from the Wikipedia reference below since I know diddly squat about the goings-on of The Rolling Stones, but if you would like to read a more astute and ‘fly on the wall’ interpretation by a passionate connoisseur of their music, then I point you to Max’s article at his PowerPop blog that includes this bitty:

When the Stones finished this recording on June 8, 1969…they drove to Brian Jones’s house to fire him. By this time he was trying to get himself clean of drugs and actually was getting better. He also had an arrest on his record that would stop the Stones from touring at the time. He started to record demos on his own and other people have said that it sounded like Creedence Clearwater Revival and that style. He would die on July 3, 1969, from drowning in his pool under a lot of controversy that still is questioned to this day.

There are two versions of the song recorded by the band. The most commonly known version Honky Tonk Women is an electric, blues-rock version (recorded in June 1969) of Country Honk, a country version (recorded in March 1969). The latter was released on their album Let it Bleed. It was written by the Mick Jagger and Keith Richards during their December 1968 jaunt to Brazil to charge their batteries after months of intense work.  The song topped the charts in both nations in both the UK and the US and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

[Verse 1]
I met a gin-soaked barroom queen in Memphis
She tried to take me upstairs for a ride
She had to heave me right across her shoulder
‘Cause I just can’t seem to drink you off my mind

[Chorus]
It’s the honky tonk women
That gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues

[Verse 2]
I laid a divorcee in New York City
I had to put up some kind of a fight
The lady then she covered me in roses
She blew my nose and then she blew my mind

[Verse 3]
Strollin’ on the boulevards of Paris
Naked as the day that I will die
The sailors, they’re so charming there in Paris
But I just don’t seem to sail you off my mind

Honky Tonk Women was inspired by Brazilian caipiras (inhabitants of rural, remote areas of parts of Brazil) at the ranch where Jagger and Richards were staying in Matão, São Paulo – so it’s said. However, thematically, a “honky tonk woman” refers to a dancing girl in a western bar; the setting for the narrative in the first verse of the rock-and-roll version is Memphis, Tennessee: “I met a gin soaked bar-room queen in Memphis“, while “Country Honk” sets the first verse in Jackson, Mississippi: “I’m sittin’ in a bar, tipplin’ a jar in Jackson“.

Keith Richards credits new arrival Mick Taylor (English guitarist) for influencing the track: “… the song was originally written as a real Hank Williams/Jimmie Rodgers/1930s country song. And it got turned around to this other thing by Mick Taylor, who got into a completely different feel, throwing it off the wall another way.” However, in 1979 Taylor recalled it this way: “I definitely added something to Honky Tonk Women, but it was more or less complete by the time I arrived and did my overdubs.”

Reference:
1. Honky Tonk Women – Wikipedia

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“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand