Rolling Stones – Honky Tonk Women

Of all the Rolling Stones songs I have posted…B sides and album cuts…I’m astonished that I haven’t posted this one. This is one of the Stones’ best 60s singles. It’s B side was You Can’t Always Get What You Want. I consider Jumping Jack Flash, Honky Tonk Women, and Brown Sugar their best rock singles. A case could be made for Satisfaction and Start Me Up as well.

When the Stones finished this recording on June 8, 1969…they drove to Brian Jones’s house to fire him. By this time he was trying to get himself clean of drugs and actually was getting better. He also had an arrest on his record that would stop the Stones from touring at the time. He started to record demos on his own and other people have said that it sounded like Creedence Clearwater Revival and that style. He would die on July 3, 1969, from drowning in his pool under a lot of controversy that still is questioned to this day. The song was released on July 4, 1969

This song was also the track that introduced Stones fans to guitarist Mick Taylor. The former member of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers was brought in to replace founding member Brian Jones. Taylor, only 20 at the time, provided the glue for the song, helping the transition from verse to chorus. Guitarist Ry Cooder also was an inspiration for the song.

The song started on a trip that Richards and Mick Jagger took to Brazil. Inspired by the cowboys working the ranch where they were vacationing, the two started knocking together a Hank Williams/Jimmie Rodgers-inspired tune, with Jagger using the countrified tone of the music as inspiration for his lyrical ode to the working women of the Old West. That version you can hear in Country Honk on the Let It Bleed album. Honky Tonk Women was released as a non-album single.

The song peaked at #1 on the Billboard 100, in the UK, in New Zealand, and #2 in Canada in 1969.

Keith Richards: ‘Honky Tonk Women’ started in Brazil. Mick and I, Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg who was pregnant with my son at the time. Which didn’t stop us going off to the Mato Grasso and living on this ranch. It’s all cowboys. It’s all horses and spurs. And Mick and I were sitting on the porch of this ranch house and I started to play, basically fooling around with an old Hank Williams idea. ‘Cause we really thought we were like real cowboys. Honky tonk women. And we were sitting in the middle of nowhere with all these horses, in a place where if you flush the john all these black frogs would fly out. It was great. The chicks loved it. Anyway, it started out a real country honk put on, a hokey thing. And then couple of months later we were writing songs and recording. And somehow by some metamorphosis it suddenly went into this little swampy, black thing, a Blues thing. Really, I can’t give you a credible reason of how it turned around from that to that. Except there’s not really a lot of difference between white country music and black country music. It’s just a matter of nuance and style. I think it has to do with the fact that we were playing a lot around with open tunings at the time. So we were trying songs out just to see if they could be played in open tuning. And that one just sunk in.”

Honky Tonk Women

I met a gin-soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis
She tried to take me upstairs for a ride
She had to heave me right across her shoulder
‘Cause I just can’t seem to drink you off my mind

It’s the honky tonk women
Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues

I laid a divorcée in New York City
I had to put up some kind of a fight
The lady then she covered me with roses
She blew my nose and then she blew my mind

It’s the honky tonk women
Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues
It’s the honky tonk women
Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues

It’s the honky tonk women
Gimme, gimme, gimme the honky tonk blues

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

43 thoughts on “Rolling Stones – Honky Tonk Women”

  1. The first time of hearing this song had my brother stop in his tracks on the intro where the cowbell then drums kick in- that got my attention too but it hooked me right in with the lead guitar before the chorus. Simple sleazy ass kicking rock and roll.

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      3. Correct.

        Mick Jagger said – “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was something I just played on the acoustic guitar—one of those bedroom songs. It proved to be quite difficult to record because Charlie couldn’t play the groove and so Jimmy Miller had to play the drums. I’d also had this idea of having a choir, probably a gospel choir, on the track, but there wasn’t one around at that point. Jack Nitzsche, or somebody, said that we could get the London Bach Choir and we said, “That will be a laugh.”

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      4. I remembered that somewhere. It was one hell of a single…a great double A side single. It sure worked…and Miller was really good drummer.

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  2. Great song Max, always a favorite of mine. Cooder was on the Rolling Stones Let It Bleed album playing by himself in the studio, when Mick Jagger asked him, “How do you do that?’ Ry Cooder responded, “You tune the E string down to D, place your fingers there, and pull them off quickly, that’s very good. Keith, perhaps you should see this.” And before long, the Rolling Stones were collecting royalties for ‘Honky Tonk Women’, which sounds precisely like a Ry Cooder song and absolutely nothing like any other song ever produced by the Rolling Stones in more than forty years.

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    1. I thought that Ry Cooder played on this one as well but I couldn’t find anything. He did influence them big time.
      Keith in his book gives thanks to Cooder and I think for Phil Everly also for teaching him the G tuning… Without G tuning…who knows what what have happened with them. When I learned that tuning it opened up 80 percent of their music since Let It Bleed.

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    1. Yes it is…can’t say I would imagine that either…Keith talks about that trip in his book…fun stories came from it. It started off as Country Honk….I need to do a post on that version one day.

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    1. LOL… that G Tuning opens up more than 80 percent of their songs. When I learned that tuning I started to play some of their songs by accident…. it doesn’t sound the same without it.

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  6. I’m jumping o the band wagon as it’s one of my favourite Stones songs. I thought there was a much closer relationship to Country Honk, but it seems more of a dotted line so to speak. Great story though and I’m sure the “Chicks” loved those black frogs!

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    1. Oh yea….that is a great live album. You can see the terror in Micks face when people run up there. There were rumors at the time that someone would shoot him…Mick Taylor sounds so damn good with his rhythm on this.

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  10. I remember Brian Jones dying and this single coming out with a bang, it was prob my fave Stones track to date at the time, and they didn’t do anything I liked nearly as much till Miss You afterwards (OK its disco, not rock, but it’s a good disco record). It seems to not be as revered these days (Honky Tonk Women) which is a shame…

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    1. That disco/rock thing…hey if it’s good it’s good. Off that album I loved Beast of Burden and Before They Make Me Run…yea I’m a huge Keith fan.

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  12. This was easy to like as a kid. It told a story I could follow and make sense of, and the melody was easy to catch onto. They didn’t come across as trying to be country singers, but they were telling about an encounter with that culture.

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