A song written by legendary musician Keith Richards was finished during a nine-day stint where he didn’t sleep for a second.
The song would make up one of the best parts of Some Girls, The Rolling Stones‘ 1978 album release, and it came during a time when “everyone was using drugs.” That’s according to frontman Mick Jagger, who says the band “got a bit carried away” not just by narcotics but their own popularity in the run-up to making Some Girls. Stripping that away from themselves was crucial, and it would land the album one of their very best releases to date. Featured on the piece is Before They Make Me Run, a song which was finished after a five-day session in the studio with Richards leading it. The veteran guitarist would say he eventually “fell asleep standing up” once the song was finished, but his efforts appear to have paid off.
Writing in his autobiography, Life, Richards shared: “One [engineer] would flop under the desk and have a kip, and I’d put the other one in and keep going. Nine days without a wink. I fell asleep standing up, eventually… I was just putting another cassette back on the shelf, and I was feeling great, and I turned ’round and fell asleep.”
Though Richards would finally rest after the marathon recording of Before They Make Me Run, it was when he woke up that he discovered a problem. He added: “I fell against the edge of the speaker. Woke up in a pool of blood, wondering, ‘Is that claret?'”
Jagger would also comment on the punk roots of Some Girls in an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine founder, Jann Wenner. Jagger said moving to New York during the thrills of the punk scene’s rise were crucial in forming the origins of Some Girls.
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.
