Mick Jagger says one of The Rolling Stones’ later albums is ‘leftovers’ from a previous release

An album released later in the career of The Rolling Stones was described as “leftovers” by frontman Mick Jagger.

While the band would release some all-time great pieces of work in the 1960s and 1970s, they struggled in the studio in the lead-up to 1980. Asked if Emotional Rescue has “any resonance” with Jagger, the frontman replied that it doesn’t. Part of the reason for that is that it is made up of “leftovers” from other albums. Jagger said: “No, it doesn’t. You know, Emotional Rescue is a lot of leftovers from Some Girls. Really.” Tattoo You would be comprised of similar leftover songs, dating back to 1974’s Goats Head Soup. Emotional Rescue, which was released on June 23, 1980, went to number one in the United States and United Kingdom despite Jagger’s indifference to the project.

The album followed on from Some Girls, an album which left The Rolling Stones revitalised in the studio and back in the good graces of fans. But when it came to Emotional Rescue, the album was created primarily with cuttings from the Some Girls recordings. It was also released around a time Keith Richards, who was becoming clean of drugs and alcohol at the time, demanded more say in the making of songs.

This would lead to a fractured relationship between Jagger and Richards that would affect the band’s follow-up, Tattoo You. Jagger would detail the “strange circumstances” of making Tattoo You later in his chat with Rolling Stone Magazine founder Jann Wenner. He explained how their 1981 album was also made up of leftover pieces, and that this was done at the insistence of producer Chris Kimsey.

Jagger explained: “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.”

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.’”