The Rolling Stones Song Mick Jagger Called ‘Weird’ and ‘Difficult’
Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are a fantastic songwriting duo who have written several classic rock songs for The Rolling Stones. However, the two artists have different personalities, sometimes creating conflicting lyrics. Jagger said Richards wrote one song for their Exile on Main St. album that he called “weird” and “difficult.”
Mick Jagger didn’t understand The Rolling Stones’ ‘Let It Loose’
“Let It Loose” was released in 1972 on The Rolling Stones’ 12th album Exile on Main St. While the track is credited to Jagger and Richards, it was primarily written by Richards. The song is about a man who is conflicted about a relationship he’s in. He knows the woman will break his heart but can’t resist her.
The track has gospel influences and contains lyrics from “Man of Constant Sorrow,” a traditional American folk song by Dick Burnett. In a 2010 interview with Uncut magazine, Jagger recalled “Let It Loose,” saying it was a “weird, difficult song” written by Richards. He didn’t quite understand the lyrics and had trouble connecting to it.
“I think Keith wrote that, actually. That’s a very weird, difficult song,” Jagger shared. “I had a whole other set of lyrics to it, but they got lost by the wayside. I don’t think that song has any semblance of meaning. It’s one of those rambling songs. I didn’t really understand what it was about after the event”.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards initially wrote songs for The Rolling Stones together, but later they would write lyrics individually and pitch them to each other. Richards said their chemistry was so powerful that they could be away from each other for a few months and still write lyrics that fit together.
“There was a time when Mick and I used to write face-to-face all the time. But we were on the road then,” Richards said via Songfacts. “Now we can bring ideas to each other, and sometimes it’s strange – we hadn’t seen each other for maybe five or six months, and we get together and funny enough, we’d each have written a piece of music that actually fits together even though we haven’t been in communication with each other.”
Jagger has conflicting thoughts about ‘Exile on Main St.’
“Let It Loose” isn’t the only Rolling Stones song on Exile on Main St. that Mick Jagger is conflicted about. In an interview with Paul Du Noyer, Jagger said the album has a “great mood” but doesn’t have a great track list.
There’s a lot of songs, so it’s hard to keep up the standard, so to speak,” Jagger said. “But when you actually come to do them, there’s a lot of songs that are really, like, not songs at all, like ‘Casino Boogie’. They’re really nicely played and everything, but there’s no hooks in them and there’s no memorable lyrics in them.”
The singer also stated that there are only a handful of songs from the album that he likes to perform at concerts.
“‘Sweet Black Angel, these are very nice songs, but nobody’s ever gonna… It’s not my thing to get up and play them,” he added. “Some of them I might do, ‘Tumbling Dice’ is good, and ‘Sweet Virginia’ is good. Then we had a revival of ‘Shine A Light,’ and someone did a gospel cover of ‘Just Wanna See His Face’ recently. I heard it in one of my local shops that I go in. But there’s not a list of outstanding songs, I think that’s what we’re saying.”
