Friday, July 25, 2014

"Honky Tonk Women" (The Rolling Stones)

If you're familiar with the Stones' 1969 album Let It Bleed, you probably know that the song "Honky Tonk Women" (released separately as a non-album single in 1969) started out as a jangly two-step called "Country Honk."  
Both songs pretty much share the same lyrics about booze and floozies.  Biggest difference is that "Country Honk" is set in Jackson, MS, whereas "Honky Tonk Women" is set in Memphis, TN.  
Musically, though, they're worlds apart.  The former is completely countrified.  Primitive-sounding, in fact.  Don't get me wrong; it's is not without its ragged, front porch n' white lightnin' charms, including audio verité moments of tires on gravel and a horn honking.  It also provides the perfect bridge from Robert Johnson's haunting "Love in Vain" to the raunchy, Motown-esque "Live With Me" on the album's first side (if we're talking vinyl).
But I prefer the Memphis-meets-East Texas funk-fire of the reimagined track.
For some reason, more than any other track by the band, "Honky Tonk Women" conjures for me the instant mental picture of Mick Jagger strutting around like a banty, pointing at the audience, shaking his hips, etc.  (Moves he largely cribbed from Tina Turner after she and Ike opened for The Stones on their 1966 tour of the United Kingdom.)  I think the answer lies somewhere between the snarling guitar licks and producer Jimmy Miller's clanking cowbell.




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