An album released by legendary rock band The Rolling Stones was released due to “strange circumstances” for the group at the time.
The Mick Jagger-fronted band were struggling to balance tour commitments with in-fighting, and had a record due that year. The resulting release, Tattoo You, was a surprising commercial and critical hit for the band. The 1981 release is made up primarily of old songs, either near completion or instrumental pieces which needed more work from the group. Jagger would call Tattoo You an underrated moment for The Rolling Stones, with the album not receiving as much credit as it may have deserved at the time. The rock and roll veteran has released thirty-one studio albums with the Keith Richards and Charlie Watts-featuring band, and has since explained the “strange circumstances” which brought about Tattoo You.
Jagger, speaking to Rolling Stone Magazine founder Jann Wenner, said: “Yeah, that’s an old record. It’s all a lot of old tracks that I dug out. And it was very strange circumstances. [Producer] Chris Kimsey and I went through all the tracks from those two previous records. It wasn’t all outtakes; some of it was old songs. And then I went back and found previous ones like Waiting on a Friend from Goats Head Soup.
“They’re all from different periods. Then I had to write lyrics and melodies. A lot of them didn’t have anything, which is why they weren’t used at the time, because they weren’t complete. They were just bits, or they were from early takes. And then I put them all together in an incredibly cheap fashion.
“I recorded in this place in Paris in the middle of the winter. And then I recorded some of it in a broom cupboard, literally, where we did the vocals. The rest of the band were hardly involved. And then I took it to [producer] Bob Clearmountain, who did this great job of mixing so that it doesn’t sound like it’s from different periods.”
Despite the bad blood between the band at the time, Tattoo You was a critical and commercial success. The favour it received at the time has not lasted, according to Jagger, who believes the album is not as idolised as other works like Exile on Main St. or Sticky Fingers.
Associate producer Chris Kimsey later said the album came about because Jagger and Richards were not getting along, though the band had to get an album out. Kimsey said: “Tattoo You really came about because Mick and Keith were going through a period of not getting on. There was a need to have an album out, and I told everyone I could make an album from what I knew was still there.
“I spent three months going through (the recording tapes from) like the last four, five albums, finding stuff that had been either forgotten about or at the time rejected. And then I presented it to the band and I said, ‘Hey, look guys, you’ve got all this great stuff sitting in the can and it’s great material, do something with it.'”
