Mick Jagger says inspiration for The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls came from the ‘punk scene’

The “punk scene” has been credited as the inspiration behind The Rolling Stones‘ Some Girls album.

Frontman Mick Jagger confirmed the likes of the Sex Pistols, Wire, and Ramones were instrumental in The Stones’ genre change in the late 1970s. Its influence got to Jagger when he moved to New York City and was so moved by the changes made to music that he introduced the sound to The Rolling Stones. Jagger praised punk and disco as the “interesting period” which left him inspired enough to write and record Some Girls with the rest of the band. Speaking to Rolling Stone Magazine founder Jann Wenner, Jagger confirmed the move to New York and the modern music scene of the times, which was mirrored in London and Paris, were the reasons for this change.

He said: “I’d moved to New York at that point. The inspiration for the record was really based in New York and the ways of the town. I think that gave it an extra spur and hardness. And then, of course, there was the punk thing that had started in 1976. Punk and disco were going on at the same time, so it was quite an interesting period.

“New York and London, too. Paris – there was punk there. Lots of dance music. Paris and New York had all this Latin dance music, which was really quite wonderful. Much more interesting than the stuff that came afterwards.”

It was not just the punk scene that helped Some Girls come to life but legendary session musician Billy Preston was also at hand to help The Rolling Stones. Jagger confirmed he and Preston pulled Miss You together for the album, and shared an abandoned live album is partly to thank.

He said: “Yeah, Billy had shown me the four-on-the-floor bass-drum part, and I would just play the guitar. I remember playing that in the El Mocambo club when Keith was on trial in Toronto for whatever he was doing.

“We were supposed to be there making this live record. I was still writing it, [after the El Mocambo performance] actually. We were just in rehearsal.” Some Girls would be viewed as a return to form for The Rolling Stones at the time, and preceded some of their most interesting works in the 1980s.

One such album, Tattoo You, happened by accident according to Jagger, who says the band were in no state to record together at the time. Instead, archival tapes and reworkings of old tracks were pieced together on an album which, like Some Girls, was very well received.

Jagger shared: “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.”