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When Linda Ronstadt Made Mick Jagger Write Down the Words to a Classic Rolling Stones Song
Far Out Magazine ^ | TUE 11TH JUL 2023 | Tyler Golsen

Posted on 07/11/2023 2:16:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway

‘Tumbling Dice’ isn’t the first choice for the most pro-woman song in The Rolling Stones’ catalogue. It’s certainly not the worst – perhaps ‘Under My Thumb’ or ‘Stupid Girl’ would take that crown. But the classic Exile on Main St cut largely revolves around Mick Jagger and some of his more salacious thoughts. While he does offer a position to his lover as his “partner in crime”, Jagger usually kicks off the song by claiming, “Women think I’m tasty (“crazy” in live versions) / And they’re always tryin’ to waste me”, establishing the divide between the sexes.

Strangely enough, Jagger got some lyrical help from a notable woman in his life – his housekeeper. “It started out with a great riff from Keith, and we had it down as a completed song called ‘Good Time Women’,” Jagger told The Sun in 2010. “That take is one of the bonus tracks on the new Exile package; it was quite fast and sounded great, but I wasn’t happy with the lyrics.”

“Later, I got the title in my head, ‘call me the tumbling dice’, so I had the theme for it,” he added. “I didn’t know anything about dice playing, but I knew lots of jargon used by dice players. I’d heard gamblers in casinos shouting it out. I asked my housekeeper if she played dice. She did, and she told me these terms. That was the inspiration.”

“Obviously, it was going to be great, but it was a big struggle,” engineer Andy Johns recalled to Goldmine about the song’s recording in 2010. “Eventually, we get a take. Hooray! I thought, ‘Let’s kick this up a notch and double-track Charlie.’ ‘Oh, we’ve never done that before.’ ‘Well, it doesn’t mean we can’t do it now.’ So we double-tracked Charlie, but he couldn’t play the ending.”

“For some reason, he got a mental block about the ending. So Jimmy Miller plays from the breakdown on out that was very easy to punch in,” Johns added. “It was a little bit different than some of the others. That song, we did more takes than anything else.”

Despite being on the more chauvinistic side of the rock and roll divide, ‘Tumbling Dice’ eventually became one of the most famous Stones songs covered by a prominent female singer when Linda Ronstadt cut her own version in 1978. Ronstadt doesn’t beat around the bush either, kicking off the song with a provocative line of her own: “People try to rape me / Always think I’m crazy”.

“The band used to play it at sound check, and we all loved it. But no one knew the words,” Ronstadt told the Green Bay Press-Gazette in 1977. “Then, when Mick walked backstage at my Amphitheatre show, he told me, ‘You do too many ballads in your show, you should do more rock and roll.'”

“I told him I thought he should do more ballads, and we teased each other about it,” Ronstadt added. “But I made him write down the words to that song for me so we could do it.”

Check out Ronstadt’s version of ‘Tumbling Dice’ down below.


TOPICS: Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: lindaronstadt; mickjagger; music; rollingstones; tumblingdice
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I guess he was under her thumb, her beast of burden.
1 posted on 07/11/2023 2:16:03 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

Is it possible for writers today not to virtue signal and view all recorded history prior to last two seconds as morally pejorative?

No is thy answer

It’s not


2 posted on 07/11/2023 2:17:42 PM PDT by wardaddy (Technology is not by default an improvement )
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To: nickcarraway

That’s one of the problems cover bands have.


3 posted on 07/11/2023 2:17:45 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SunkenCiv

You mean knowing the exact words?


4 posted on 07/11/2023 2:18:10 PM PDT by nickcarraway (`)
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To: wardaddy

Well, if they acknowledge that past songs and movies don’t have to be correct, they might realize their standards are stupid and don’t work. And we can’t have that.


5 posted on 07/11/2023 2:19:23 PM PDT by nickcarraway (`)
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To: nickcarraway

No, as in, cover bands never write anything.


6 posted on 07/11/2023 2:19:47 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: SunkenCiv
When Kim Carnes recorded Bette Davis Eyes, she had never heard the idiomatic phrase, Make a crow blush," (same) so she thought it was , "Make a pro blush."
7 posted on 07/11/2023 2:22:00 PM PDT by nickcarraway (`)
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To: nickcarraway

Now there’s a woman who could pull it off, even though she can’t sing. :^)

[wiki-wacky: “written and composed by Donna Weiss and Jackie DeShannon in 1974.”]


8 posted on 07/11/2023 2:24:01 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (Putin should skip ahead to where he kills himself in the bunker.)
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To: nickcarraway

Not among my favorites of theirs.


9 posted on 07/11/2023 2:26:06 PM PDT by KevinB (Word for the day: "kakistocracy" - a society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens)
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To: SunkenCiv
The Jackie DeShannon version is very different, so they had a lot of vision to do the Kim Carnes version. (Which ended up being the 2nd biggest hit of the 80s.)



Kim Carnes - Under My Thumb (Live On Fridays)

10 posted on 07/11/2023 2:28:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway
...so she thought it was , "Make a pro blush."

One of the most cringe worthy lines in all of music. Right up there with, "Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain."

11 posted on 07/11/2023 2:28:48 PM PDT by KevinB (Word for the day: "kakistocracy" - a society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens)
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To: nickcarraway

Taylor Swift would whine about the ‘misogyny’ of such a song and refuse to cover it. Music and musicians suck these days.


12 posted on 07/11/2023 2:30:00 PM PDT by montag813
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To: nickcarraway
Kim Carnes - Under My Thumb (Live On Fridays)

Fridays! That was a great, underrated show.

13 posted on 07/11/2023 2:31:32 PM PDT by montag813
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To: montag813

I don’t think she covers songs, because she makes a lot of money from royalties.


14 posted on 07/11/2023 2:32:20 PM PDT by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

The only covers she does is her own. All her Big Machine catalogue is being redone as “Taylor Versions” . She gets all the royalties.


15 posted on 07/11/2023 2:37:52 PM PDT by bleach (If I agreed with you, we would both be wrong.)
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To: wardaddy

He’s can’t just shut-up and write an article. Moralization where intros once were.


16 posted on 07/11/2023 2:52:00 PM PDT by AAABEST ( NY/DC/CA media/political/military industrial complex DELENDA EST)
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To: nickcarraway

Yeah, there were no lyric sheets in “Exile”, and that would have been a difficult track to guess all the lyrics on.

Fun fact: Otis Redding and the Stax band did a lot of covers, but they didn’t have lyric sheets for most of the songs. They would just go downstairs to the record store and stand around a record player listening to the original and trying to write down the lyrics as best they could. This led to some pretty funny misheard lyrics in their covers, including their version of “Satisfaction”, where “I can’t get no girly action” becomes “I can’t get no good reaction”, etc.


17 posted on 07/11/2023 2:52:15 PM PDT by Boogieman
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To: SunkenCiv
No, as in, cover bands never write anything.

There is no requirement to write if you can perform. Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra wrote little, but made the songs their own. Artie Shaw did not write "Begin the Beguine", but he sure made it into something much better . (He improved on Cole Porter!)

Christopher Cross could write, but needed a LOT of studio processing for his singing to be minimally acceptable. (Carol King would be an example of someone who could do both. She is the exception.)

Most of the rockers who "write their own" cannot even consistent come up with true rhymes. (Elton John got around this by having a true lyricist, Bernie Taupin, among others to help most of the time).




18 posted on 07/11/2023 2:54:00 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana ("If you can’t say something nice . . . say the Rosary." [Red Badger])
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To: nickcarraway

Some folks try to judge the past by the standards of the present.

I prefer to judge the present by the standards of the past. The present often fares badly by comparison.


19 posted on 07/11/2023 2:55:05 PM PDT by NorthMountain (... the right of the peopIe to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed)
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To: Boogieman

My sister was the lead singer in a local Country Music band in Connecticut years ago. She would buy the 45. Mishear the Juice Newton lyrics (Queen of Hearts), sing the wrong lyrics, and no one cared.


20 posted on 07/11/2023 2:55:25 PM PDT by Dr. Sivana ("If you can’t say something nice . . . say the Rosary." [Red Badger])
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