The Rolling Stones Embrace Disco on ‘Miss You’

Not one of the Rolling Stones thought “Miss You” would quantity to a lot, and it actually wasn’t a high precedence after they had been recording their 1978 album, Some Women.

The germ of the track was born when Mick Jagger and Billy Preston began playing around with some concepts at Toronto’s El Mocambo membership in March 1977. (The Stones recorded a reside album there, Dwell on the El Mocambo, which would not be launched till 2022.) “Billy had proven me the four-on-the-floor bass-drum half, and I might simply play the guitar,” Jagger recalled to Rolling Stone in 1995. “I used to be nonetheless writing it, truly. We had been simply in rehearsal.”

When periods for Some Women started later that yr, the remainder of the Stones weren’t that eager on the track; Jagger, a frequent patron of New York’s disco membership Studio 54, was essentially the most excited about the music that was then dominating the airwaves on the time due to teams like Bee Gees and ABBA. “We simply thought we would put our oar in on Mick eager to do some disco shit, preserve the person completely satisfied,” Keith Richards wrote in his 2011 e book, Life. “However as we received into it, it grew to become fairly an fascinating beat. And we realized, possibly we have a quintessential disco factor right here.”

Drummer Charlie Watts was additionally considerably unimpressed. “It was the dance factor on the time,” he defined in 2000. “It was a case of attempting to assist [Jagger] write a track by enjoying the drums with him. That is all it’s actually; it is referred to as being a band.”

It was then a query of find out how to do disco Rolling Stones-style. “We might all the time simply adapt with what music was within the air,” Ronnie Wooden added. “We thought simply concerning the beat, you realize?”

Take heed to the Rolling Stones’ ‘Miss You’

Bassist Invoice Wyman did his homework, taking the rudimentary bass half Preston had performed on a demo tape and dealing up one thing extra stable. “‘Miss You’ took fairly a time to return collectively,” Some Women engineer Chris Kimsey instructed Sound on Sound in 2004. “Invoice wanted to go to fairly just a few golf equipment earlier than he received that bass line sorted out. However he did kind it out, and bless him, it made that track.” The end result was a thick strolling bass line that match neatly into Watts’ four-on-the-floor drumming.

The track’s well-known harmonica flip was not performed by Jagger, who usually dealt with the position throughout the band. As an alternative, the half was performed by a musician named Sugar Blue, whom Wooden stated Jagger found busking on the streets of Paris. “You possibly can give that man a harmonica in a single key and inform him to affix in within the track in any key from A to G, and he would bend it on that very same harmonica,” Wooden recalled. “The one different particular person I’ve met who’s like that’s Stevie Surprise.”

Saxophonist Mel Collins, who had performed on albums by Robert Palmer, Bryan Ferry and Eric Clapton, contributed to the track, too. Despite the fact that Collins wasn’t the Stones’ regular sax participant, Bobby Keys’ relationship with Jagger was strained on the time. Richards most well-liked their regular sideman.

“I used to be there with Mick and attempting to [play] the solo of my life,” Collins instructed Rolling Stone in 2021. “And in walks Keith. He walked in direction of me and I went to shake his hand. He fully blanked me and walked over to the opposite aspect, sat on a stool studying a duplicate of Melody Maker and fully ignored me. To be sincere, it was very uncomfortable. However the finish result’s fairly good, I believe. I did not hear it for years. However once I heard it, I believed it wasn’t dangerous.” Collins stated he performed two or three takes complete: “They ran out of tracks, so that they had to make use of what I did.”

Watch the Rolling Stones Carry out ‘Miss You’ at Dwell Help in 1985

Ian McLagan added electrical piano, and the track, in all its dance-floor glory, was full. Launched within the U.S. on Could 10, 1978, as the primary single from Some Women, “Miss You” went to No. 1 on the Billboard Scorching 100.

It arrived within the U.Ok. just a few weeks afterward Could 26 and went to No. 3 – proof that the Rolling Stones may nonetheless be related within the disco period. “Out of it, we received an enormous hit,” Richards wrote in Life. “The remainder of the album would not sound something like ‘Miss You.'”