Rolling Stones – Moonlight Mile

When I hear this song, I think of deep winter, which fits perfectly right now. That is when I first heard it, during a cold January. Our drummer turned me on to this song and most of the Stones’ album cuts. I was the Beatles guy, and he was the Stones guy of our band, so our car trips were full of great music picked by either of us.

Keith Richards was not at the recording session for one reason or another. Richard likes the song, though. With Richards gone, Mick Taylor did all the guitar work on the recording, and it’s outstanding as usual for Taylor. Mick Taylor really defined much of their sound through this period. When he left, the sound they had stretched over their golden period of 5 albums was gone. Additionally, producer Jimmy Miller also left, and he had a huge role in the sound.

I’ve looked up what Moonlight Mile, the title, means, and I have found one source that says it means a nighttime cocaine session. I can totally buy that during that time. Others say it was just a song about profound loneliness, weariness, and longing for home while touring. This is one of the Stones’ most human and honest recordings. No blues rewrite, no stadium chorus anthems or big hit. Just fatigue, longing, and the sound of a band that knew when not to overdo it.

The song was on Sticky Fingers, and the album peaked at #1 on the Billboard Album Chart, #1 in the UK, and #1 in Canada in 1971. On an album packed with headlines, this quiet closer is the one I return to when I want to hear who they really were in that moment. Beggars Banquet is my favorite Stones album, but Sticky Fingers is probably their artistic best.

If you want to hear a different version…here is the Grateful Dead’s live version of it in 1976.

Mick Jagger: That’s a dream song. Those kinds of songs with kinds of dreamy sounds are fun to do, but not all the time – it’s nice to come back to reality.”

Mick Jagger: “I also came up with an Oriental-Indian riff on my acoustic guitar. At some point during the tour I played it for Mick Taylor, because I thought he would like it. At that point, I really hadn’t intended on recording the song. Sometimes you don’t want to record what you’re writing. You think, ‘This isn’t worth recording, this is just my doodling.’

“When we finished our European tour in October 1970, we were at Stargroves… We were sitting around one night and I started working on what I had initially written. I felt great. I was in my house again and it was very relaxing. So the song became about that – looking forward to returning from a foreign place while looking out the window of a train and the images of the railway line going by in the moonlight.”

Moonlight Mile

When the wind blows and the rain feels cold
With a head full of snow
With a head full of snow
In the window there’s a face you know
Don’t the nights pass slow
Don’t the nights pass slow

The sound of strangers sending nothing to my mind
Just another mad mad day on the road
I am just living to be lying by your side
But I’m just about a moonlight mile on down the road

Made a rag pile of my shiny clothes
Gonna warm my bones
Gonna warm my bones
I got silence on my radio
Let the air waves flow
Let the air waves flow

Oh I’m sleeping under strange strange skies
Just another mad mad day on the road
My dreams is fading down the railway line
I’m just about a moonlight mile down the road

I’m hiding sister and I’m dreaming
I’m riding down your moonlight mile
I’m hiding baby and I’m dreaming
I’m riding down your moonlight mile
I’m riding down you moonlight mile

Let it go now, come on up babe
Yeah, let it go now
Yeah, flow now baby
Yeah move on now yeah

Yeah, I’m coming home
‘Cause, I’m just about a moonlight mile on down the road
Down the road, down the road

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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.

38 thoughts on “Rolling Stones – Moonlight Mile”

  1. I know I have heard this song as I have listened to Sticky Fingers but it’s been so long I don’t recall it! As often happens, the hits from an album get in the way of some of gems – like this one.

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  2. Pingback: Rolling Stones – Moonlight Mile – MobsterTiger

  3. When you talk about the meaning(s) of the song, I don’t think there’s any contradiction between the two – in fact, they reinforce each other. The first two lines definitely evoke that crispy around the edges feeling of coming down from cocaine – and that feeling is reinforced by the loneliness and alienation of life on the road (and realizing that coke doesn’t fill the hole).

    Most folks think of Jagger and Richards when they think of the Stones. I think it was only later that I realized the significance of the Brian Jones and Mick Taylor eras.

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    1. I never thought about it that way but you are right. They DO go together well.
      I totally agree with you on Jones and Taylor. Jones started the band and introduced different instruments to them that changed them.
      Taylor’s guitar playing cannot be underestimated…with just his technical knowledge alone….he was the best guitar player they ever had and Jones was perhaps the best all around musician….he could play around any instrument.

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  4. You provided another gem and I don’t know if you realized it. After the live version ends, one of the suggestions is a live version by the Jerry Garcia Band in 1976. It is beautiful and shows Donna and Keith Godchaux at their best. As a live version, I think it outshines the 1999 Stones.

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  5. it’s one of those songs you forget about…I think I recently heard it in a tv show (3 Body Problem maybe) that had me digging through my vinyl to figure out which album it was on……I get because you think Sticky Fingers you think Brown Sugar and Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’….it’s weird, even though one of my fave albums, Goat’s Head Soup I think contains more of my fave Stones songs, like 100 Years Ago and Hide Your Love….and you’re right Taylor made that era, what guitar player hasn’t jammed to Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’ even attempted the horn section on six strings?

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    1. Warren…you are the first person to mention one of my favorite Stones songs…that one in paticular…”100 Years Ago” is in my top 3 of Stones songs….following Memory Motel…
      When they lost Taylor…their sound totally changed. That Les Paul just fit in there perfectly.

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    2. I heartily agree, you think Sticky Fingers you think Brown Sugar and Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’.

      Well, no, Brown Sugar stands out on its own.

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      1. Wood was a good guy to have around, a bond when they were feuding, he probably kept them together for longer than you would have thought possible, he knows his craft, but…

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  8. The idea that there was the Brian Jones period, the Mick Taylor period and then the Ron Wood period is perfect. By no means earth shattering, but so very true. Having said that, my favorite is the period from Beggar’s Banquet to Sticky Fingers, although Satisfaction is one of the greatest rock songs of all time. I remember an article by the late, great Greg Shaw that started with some kids riding around town in a car, listening to the AM radio playing the greatest songs (Top 40, of course). There was some argument about this or that until on comes #1, Satisfaction, and the Shaw succinctly wrote: We all won.

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    1. Yea…there are periods I like better than others….but I do like all of them. Taylor just completely changed their sound with Let It Bleed, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!), Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St., Goats Head Soup, and It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll. And even Start Me Up for Tattoo You they dug out of the vaults.
      Satisfaction and Dylan’s Like A Rolling Stone are two great singles from the sixties.
      Beggars Banquet will always probably always be my top Stones album…

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    1. It is overlooked…just as Memory Motel is at times. When I looked for the song yesterday the Garcia version came up…I almost posted that…I really like it. I labeled it wrong though… that is Donna Jean Godchaux right? She sounds really good here.

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      2. I liked her as well. She got a bad rap from some fans…I’ve been on stage when you can’t hear yourself sing…it’s a no-win situation and she went through that a lot. In this one it’s quiet and she can actually hear and sings great.

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      3. Someone running the Grateful Dead sound system was cutting off her microphone and I don’t know who did that or what she did to piss them off, but they had it in for her. She didn’t have that problem in the Jerry Garcia Band.

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  12. Never knew the meaning about this song title but it makes total sense. Sticky Fingers is an all time classic album. I think with Keef not showing up for this session it was safe to say we knew what he was doing haha…

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