Mick Jagger – Memo From Turner

This song should have been a Rolling Stones song but it was on the soundtrack of a movie Jagger did in 1969. It’s my absolute favorite thing Jagger ever released under his name only. The slide guitar in this song is just downright nasty. Ry Cooder did the honors in this song.

Mick Jagger starred in this movie called Performance in 1970. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel so I’ll paste the plot from IMDB:

Chas is an East London thug who works for gangster Harry Flowers and his associates (although they don’t use the word gangster to describe themselves). Chas is generally sadistic in his nature and thus revels in his work. But his sadistic nature also pervades his personal life. As such, he will work on his own personal agenda outside of the work for Harry. It is in this vein that an encounter with Joey Maddocks, a man with whom Chas has a history, leads to Chas needing to hide out from Harry and his associates. Ultimately Chas feels he needs to clandestinely leave the country. In the meantime, he, based solely on a private conversation he overhears between strangers, manages to take refuge in the basement of a Notting Hill flat owned by a man named Turner, who lives there with two female companions named Pherber and Lucy. Chas considers their lifestyle bohemian and one of free love, which is outside of his mentality. Turner is an ex-rock musician who has lost his “demon” and thus his desire to be a performer. As Chas makes arrangements for his departure out of England, he gets caught up in Turner’s lifestyle, Turner who is working on his own agenda in spending time with Chas.

I saw this movie in the 1980s…it’s a good movie. It’s not Mary Poppins by any stretch of the imagination so you will be seeing an R-rated movie that can border on X. They had to cut a few scenes to make it an R back then. Jagger does a great job in it…it’s been said more than playing himself in this film… he was playing his ex-bandmate Brian Jones.

The song was credited to Jagger/Richards and on some takes only Jagger. There were 3 versions of the song. The first take was from Mick with some of the band Traffic backing him but it wasn’t officially released. The 2nd version was a version of it by The Stones with Ry Cooder on slide. The third version was recorded in 1970 featuring Mick Jagger, Ry Cooder on slide guitar, Russ Titelman (guitar), Randy Newman (piano), Jerry Scheff (bass), and Gene Parsons on drums. That is the one that everyone knows.

Keith Richards didn’t want anything to do with it. He was not happy with the love scenes between his actress girlfriend Anita Pallenberg and Mick Jagger. Keith held a lot of resentment over that for a long time and let Mick know in his 2010 book Life. He ripped Jagger pretty well over it and it took them a few years to start talking again.

This is a very dirty and grimy song…it would have been a perfect fit on Exile On Mainstreet or Sticky Fingers. Any Goodfellas fans out there might remember it in that movie.

The song peaked at #32 on the UK Charts in 1970.

Memo From Turner

Didn’t I see you down in San Antone on a hot and dusty night?
We were eating eggs in Sammy’s when the black man there drew his knife
Didn’ you drown that Jew in Rampton when he washed his sleeveless shirt
With that Spanish-speaking gentlemen, the one we all called “Kurt.”

Come now, gentleman, there must be some mistake
How forgetful I’m becoming, now you fixed your business straight

I remember you in Hemlock Road in nineteen fifty-six
You’re a faggy little leather boy with a smaller piece of stick
You’re a lashing, smashing hunk of man
Your sweat shines sweet and strong
Your organ’s working perfectly, but there’s a part that’s not screwed on

Weren’t you at the Coke convention back in nineteen sixty-five
You’re the misbred, grey executive that I’ve seen heavily advertised
You’re the great, gray man whose daughter licks policemen’s buttons clean
You’re the man who squats behind the man who works the soft machine

Come now, gentleman, your love is all I crave
You’ll still be in the circus when I’m laughing, laughing in my grave

When the old men do the fighting and the young men all look on
And the young girls eat their mothers meat from tubes of plastic on
So be wary please my gentle friends of all the skins you breed
They have a nasty habit that is they bite the hands that feed

So remember who you say you are and keep your noses clean
Boys will be boys and play with toys so be strong with your beast
Oh Rosie dear, don’t you think it’s queer, so stop me if you please
The baby is dead, my lady said, “You gentlemen, why you all work for me?”

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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.

23 thoughts on “Mick Jagger – Memo From Turner”

    1. Personally I liked it…basically a gangster and a rock star kind of guy switch places…his co-star went nuts for a while after this movie…the one that turned into him. I think he joined a cult for a long time.

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  4. Wow, new song and new movie entirely. Never heard of the movie – so then Jagger is playing Turner, the ex-rock star? – and don’t recognize the song either, though I have seen ‘Goodfellas’ a couple of times. Definitely some good slide guitar on there, as you rightly say. Song itself doesn’t grab me much but could easily have fit into a Stones album back then, I’d say. Do you think if Richards hadn’t been mad at Mick (for obvious reasons apparently) that he would have had it done by the band and put on one of their records?

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    1. Yes he is playing that…basically they switch places…it’s an interesting movie. Like other Stones songs it took me a few listens to really like it…plus it’s in Goodfellas.
      Oh yea Keith would have done it…no doubt…it fits them better than some Stones songs.

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  6. Not sure I’ve heard this, or don’t remember it. The guitars in this are a-slippin and a-slidin all over the place in the best of ways. I remember Keith talking about a movie Mick and Anita made.

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  9. I like this Max. I actually have the album. Saw the movie (which I liked) back when i was just into my teens There was a run down old movie house that would show all these underground films. Cheap ticket. Didnt check ID.
    Love the sound on this one. I hear why you like it. You sent me on the Cooder run and I just listened to Jamming With Edward yesterday. Something about the music from this stage that grabs me. Put it in words for me Max.

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    1. Oh me also…someone just described this song as “scuzzy” and that is a great compliment to it! That sound was about as dirty as you can get.
      I would have liked to seen it on the big screen.

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  11. “Memo” used to be very hard to find on record, which was frustrating because I loved it. It corresponds to the most explosive and impressive part of a film which is otherwise tiresome, hampered by Jagger’s otherwise awful acting, only coming alive when he performs this song in what is basically a video within a film (ironically illustrating his advice to Chas, the gangster, that “the only performance that makes it… that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness.”)

    I finally got a proper recording in the late 1970’s on an odd Decca Stones compilation, part of a series of five which featured each Stone alone on the cover, printed in a magenta negative image. This particular one had Charlie Watts. It’s the excellent version from the soundtrack — the greatest Stones song they didn’t technically produce, though it has all the menacing style of their 1968-1970 material. STAY AWAY from the version of “Memo” on the “Metamorphosis” Decca “raiding the vaults” outtake rip-off compilation. I recall a hipster critic claiming this was the “best version”, clearly counting on no one ever having heard it, to gain credibility from citing the obscure. That version is nothing but a rehearsal run through, a rough sketch, with Jagger delivering the words unemotionally, merely blocking them into place within a shallow instrumental recording.

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    1. Thanks for reading… glad you got a proper recording.
      You just nailed something that I never really put into words…after Goats Head Soup or maybe Exile…they lost that menacing style you talked about…I think it left with Mick Taylor and his Les Paul.
      I always liked Ronnie Wood but with Taylor…they were on.

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