Tag: Before They Make Me Run

Rolling Stones – Before They Make Me Run

A great “Keith” song on the great Stone’s album Some Girls released in 1978. Some of the lyrics make me laugh because of how honest they are. Maybe one of the best lines in Rock “I wasn’t looking too good but I was feeling real well”… It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that.

Some of the others are not so fun such as “Booze and pills and powders, you can choose your medicine, Well here’s another goodbye to another good friend.” In the world Keith was living in, it rang true. I’ve read that this line was about Keith’s good friend Gram Parsons who had died of a heroin overdose in 1973.

Richards recorded the song in five days without sleeping in March of 1978, a year after he was busted for heroin in Canada.

This and Happy are my favorite Keith Richards songs with the Stones. You Got the Silver is up there also. This is a Jagger/Richards song but Keith wrote most if not all of this one.

Great raw Rock and Roll song.

Keith Richards: “For sheer longevity – for long distance – there is no track that I know of like ‘Before They Make Me Run.’ That song, which I sang on that record, was a cry from the heart. But it burned up the personnel like no other. I was in the studio, without leaving, for five days… I had an engineer called Dave Jordan and I had another engineer, and one of them would flop under the desk and have a few hours’ kip and I’d put the other one in and keep going. We all had black eyes by the time it was finished… That’s probably the longest I’ve done. There have been others that were close – ‘Can’t Be Seen’ was one – but ‘Before They Make Me Run’ was the marathon.”

From Songfacts

This is about the rock and roll lifestyle that got Keith Richards in trouble. The song was recorded while he was out on bail after getting caught with heroin and arrested for drug trafficking in Toronto in 1977. He was found guilty of the lesser charge of heroin possession, and sentenced to probation.
Richards sang lead and did the majority of the work on this song. With Keith’s drug charges pending, Mick Jagger took a lot of control on the album, but this song was pretty much all Keith.
The original title was “Rotten Roll.”
Richard’s vocals were double-tracked to make them stand out.
A member of The Byrds, Parsons died in 1973 at age 26 after taking an overdose of alcohol and morphine. His corpse was stolen and burned in the Mojave Desert.
An engineer named Dave Jordan helped mix this song. He went on to work with groups like The Specials and The Pogues.

Before They Make Me Run

Worked the bars and sideshows along the twilight zone
Only a crowd can make you feel so alone
And it really hit home
Booze and pills and powders, you can choose your medicine
Well here’s another goodbye to another good friend

After all is said and done
Gotta move while it’s still fun
Let me walk before they make me run
After all is said and done
I gotta move, it’s still fun
I’m gonna walk before they make me run

Watched my taillights fading, there ain’t a dry eye in the house
They’re laughing and singing
Started dancing and drinking as I left town
Gonna find my way to heaven, ’cause I did my time in hell, oh yeah
I wasn’t looking too good but I was feeling real well

Oh after all is said and done
I gotta move I had my fun
Let us walk before they make us run

After all is said and done
I did alright, I had my fun
But I will walk before they’ll make me
I will walk before they’ll make me (run)
I will walk before they’ll make me (run)
I will walk before they’ll make me run

So if it’s all been said and done
I gotta move I had my fun
Let me walk before they make me run

So let me walk before they make me run
I want to walk before they’ll make me run