Around 4pm on 22nd May 2018 I was standing in line outside the London Stadium, waiting for the gates to open for a Rolling Stones show. The wait was made more tolerable by virtue of being able to hear the band going through their sound check. During one song, the distinctive tones of Sir Mick Jagger were complemented by the voice of Florence Welch, who with her band would later open the show. The song that she performed with the Stones that day was Wild Horses, one of my favourites from their so-called country rock phase in the late 60’s.
Along with Brown Sugar and You Gotta Move, the song was recorded in early December 1969 at the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama, just a couple of days before the fateful Altamont Festival at which a young man was murdered and which left the Rolling Stones completely traumatised. The recording sessions and the festival were filmed for the documentary Gimme Shelter but due to contractual issues it would be another eighteen months before the three tracks were released on the album Sticky Fingers in June 1971.
Wild Horses is essentially about being away from home and with its haunting vocals and minor key, contrasts with Willie Nelson’s love of touring as expressed in his song On The Road Again. Keith Richards had recently become a father to Marlon and as he writes in his memoir Life, “Wild Horses was about the usual thing of not wanting to be on the road, being a million miles from where you want to be”.
As always at such a distance, recollections vary somewhat, with Richards believing he had the chords and chorus while Jagger recalls his former partner Marianne Faithfull having used the phrase “wild horses wouldn’t drag me away”. There’s another tale that it was Faithfull who co-wrote the lyric and subsequently won a share of the royalties but whatever the song’s gestation, there’s no doubting it was one of the band’s finest, becoming Sir Mick’s future wife Jerry Hall’s personal favourite.
Gram Parsons recalled that Jagger had played him the recording a day after Altamont and later requested Parsons to add pedal steel to the master tape. That failed in the attempt but Parsons was given permission to record the song with The Flying Burrito Brothers, whose version would appear on their second album, Burrito Deluxe in May 1970, over a year before the Stones put out their own version.
This was the first of many covers of the song. The minor key verses lead into a rising major key chorus, while there’s a different feel to the main instrumental and final solo provided by Richards and the then lead guitarist, Mick Taylor. The result is a hybrid of blues and country whose appeal crosses the genres. Versions that lean towards country are by Little Big Town and Buddy Miller with Shawn Colvin, while soulful renditions are by LaBelle and also Alicia Keys featuring Adam Levine. British band The Sundays recorded the song in 1992, theirs being featured in the film Fear and in an episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Hot off the press is a delightful new version subtitled Irish Folk from Delta Ash and last but definitely not least is the version by Susan Boyle. This was released as the single from her début album in 2009 and happily Sir Mick had the good grace to say that her “ghostly version” was much better than anything he had ever done.
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