← Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
Behind The Song: Classic Rock Chronicles
The Rolling Stones’ hit song that almost never happened
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Podcast Host
97.1Fm the drive presents the behind the Song podcast, taking you deeper into classic rock's most timeless tunes.
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Janda
Here's your host, Janda It's a song that almost never happened, something Keith Richards called a fluke. But it ended up being one of the songs that instantly identify the Rolling Stones. And Richards, the author of its trademark opening riff, remains amazed that what started out as a reggae song he'd come up with and then discarded became such an important part of the band's legacy. Admitting that it went straight over his head, get into the story of how Start Me up was saved from obscurity and cobbled together into a signature song for the band in this episode of the behind the Song podcast. If you like it, please give it a like and hit subscribe By 1981, after the success of the band's previous two albums, Some Girls and Emotional Rescue, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were barely talking from a musical standpoint. Richards wanted the band to remain true to its roots, while Jagger was interested in contemporary trends going back to their very successful stonesy answer to disco music on the Some Girls album. Plus, he was getting into acting. Mick and Keith, the Glimmer Twins, were just not on the same page, and so working together on a full album of all new material was sort of out of the question. But they were booked on a world tour and a new album was needed to tour behind. Faced with this pickle, Prince Rupert Lowenstein, the band's business manager, asked engineer Chris Kimsey, what are we going to do to get another album? So out of that necessity, Kimzy came up with a solution. He told Lowenstein that he knew of at least six tracks that he'd recorded with the band during sessions for those two previous albums, and that he would rake through the vaults to see if anything else significant was laying around collecting dust. And then he spent the next four months parsing through take after take, session after session, and emerged with what he knew was a wonderful collection of songs. In essence, the entire Tattoo you album was a collection of polished up outtakes that had been previously recorded but never released. When all was said and done, the rockers went on side one and the ballads on side two. And if this album sounds like all of the Rolling Stones songs all together at once, it's because it's exactly what it is. Despite the way it came together, it sounds so cohesive because Kimzy found real gems to work with on his treasure hunt. According to Kimsey, Waiting on a Friend and Tops were from the Goat's Head Soup Sessions slave and Worried about yout Were from Black and Blue. Start Me up was first put to tape in 1975 during the Black and Blue sessions, but put to the side and then re recorded with a different arrangement during the Some girls sessions of 1978. Kimsey has said that when it was recorded, Richards was not a fan. Richards said that it sounded like something he'd heard on the radio and told Kimzy to get rid of it. Luckily, Kimzy did not. Richards recalled that during the sessions, while they were jamming on multiple takes of what was then the reggae version he envisioned when he wrote it and not quite getting it right, there came a tension breaking moment when he says Charlie and I hit the rock and roll version. When he and Charlie Watts suddenly started playing something very close to what we fans have come to know. And then he says they went straight back to playing the reggae version. He says that they completely forgot about that quote one little in the middle he was convinced that it was a reggae song. Otherwise on the Tattoo youo album Hang Fire, Little tna, Black Limousine, Neighbors, Heaven and no Use In Crying were from the emotional Rescue sessions. Kimzy did rough mixes of everything he had found and sent him off to the band. Mixed vocal was the main thing missing from most of the songs because he hadn't written lyrics for them yet. So the lyrics were recorded in Paris, where Jagger was staying in 1981. A cheap warehouse was rented in an industrial part of the city and the Stones famous mobile truck was parked inside. Kimsey recalled that it was so cold when Jagger was recording his vocals that he could see his breath coming out of his mouth when he sang. None of the other band members showed up and Richards didn't participate until the tracks were being mixed by Bob Clearmountain in New York City. Clear Mountain's contributions to the sound of this album were paramount. He was chief engineer at the power station in New York when he was brought on to handle the mixes. And it was his now famous technique known as bathroom reverb that gives Start Me up that incredible bombastic sound. He achieved it by recording some of the song's vocal and drum tracks in the bathroom of the studio through a mic speaker. The acclaimed Clear Mountain went on to produce or engineer some of the biggest albums in rock, among them the Reckless album by Brian Adams and Born in the USA by Bruce Springsteen. This was very much a crafted over album with much in the hands of its engineer and mixer. All In. It's incredibly wild that an album that started out as little more than a compilation of rough outtakes recorded over the span of several years, which the band was completely unmotivated to work on, would top the charts in the US and produce some of the biggest hit singles of their career, including Start Me up, the album opener and the lead single. As for mixed vocals, first breathed to life in the icy air in a Paris warehouse, they provide plenty of rock and roll innuendo. Ostensibly written about a race car, but suggesting a decidedly more romantic flesh and blood interest. It begins with the promise of a well oiled machine. If you start me up I'll never stop I've been running hot, you got me ticking now don't blow my top, you make a grown man cry. Spread out the oil, the gasoline, I walk smooth ride in a mean, mean machine. I mean, we all know it's not really a song about a car. Well, before the song is done, the double entendre is making sure of that. Although there are plenty of lines that stick to the car as the subject like kick on the starter, give it all you got I can't compete with the riders in the other heats My eyes dilate, my lips go green, my hands are greasy She's a mean, mean machine and ride like the wind at double speed I'll take you places that you've never, never seen and the song ends, start me up, never stop, you make a grown man cry, you make a dead man come one subject, two interpretations the classic approach to making a song risque and still getting to hear it on the radio. It all worked beautifully, of course. Start Me up went to number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in the States when it was released in 1981, and it was a complete worldwide smash. Perfect timing for the newly launched MTV2. The video showing just the band performing against a black background became one of the most played at the channel in its early era, and it earned the Stones a new generation of fans who were glued to MTV in their living rooms. This song has the distinction of being the first song that the Stones allowed to be used for an advertising campaign. Bill Gates personally selected Start Me up to promote Microsoft's Windows 95, paying about $3 million for the use. It's also become a staple at sporting events, and the Stones played it in the halftime show at the Super bowl in 2006. It's often used as a show opener at their concerts. The Tattoo youo album was the eighth consecutive number one album for the band in the U.S. the Rolling Stones recently made history when they became the first act to reach the top 10 in the US with new albums in every decade since the 1960s, when Hackney Diamonds, their first album released after the passing of Charlie Watts, went to number three in 2023. Start me up is a definitive moment in the history of the band known as the world's greatest rock and roll band. It shows them at their Stones y best on what turned out to be a much adored collection of totally forgotten and discarded songs divided into rockers and ballads. On Tattoo U, all ingeniously stitched together, Keith Richards said it best the story here is the miracle that we ever found that track. It's hard to imagine rock and roll without it. And luckily, thanks to the tenacity of a very smart engineer, we don't have to I'm Janda and this has been behind the song. If you liked this episode, give it a like and subscribe to the channel. Special thanks as always to Christian Lane for the music you hear on these podcast episodes. Check us out on TikTok and you can find me on the air weekdays from 9 to 2 Central at 9701 FM the Drive in Chicago and at wdrv.com on the way. Much more classic rock and roll. It.