Album: Between The Buttons
Year: 1967
. . .
According to one of my sources for this insanity, the comprehensive if indifferently written The Rolling Stones All The Songs: The Story Behind Every Track by Philippe Margotin & Jean-Michel Guesdon, “Connection” is the first song where Keith Richard sings lead, which — given how close Mick is singing with him — is almost a distinction without a difference.
That said, ever since the X-pensive Winos tours in the late 1980s, Keith has essentially claimed “Connection” as one of his quintessential songs, like “Happy” or “Before They Make Me Run,” and given how much it foreshadows his future, it totally makes sense.
“Connection” opens in medias res, like they didn’t start rolling tape until slightly after the song started, Keith and Mick starting off with the chorus.
All I want to do is to get back to you
Connection, I just can’t make no connection
But all I want to do is to get back to you
Despite (or maybe because of) the absolutely dead simple drum pattern — tambourine for the sizzle, Charlie on the snare for the pop and Mick hitting the bass drum with his hands for the thump — “Connection” doesn’t really seem to have a genre: there are country twangs on the harmonies, especially on “dooooooo” and “yoouuuuuu,” but Ian Stewart’s piano adds almost a ska feel while Keith’s leads are pure rock’n’roll, as are the rest of lyrics.
Everything is going in the wrong direction
The doctor wants to give me more injections
Giving me shots for a thousand rare infections
And I don’t know if he’ll let me go
Of course, by this time, some of the Rolling Stones were pretty openly using drugs — not smack, not yet — and Between The Buttons was the first album where that became well and truly became apparent, mostly in the music, which was just fucking weird in places. (Awesomely weird, as we’ll talk about tomorrow.) But also in the lyrics, which in the case of the second verse of “Connection,” were prophetic.
My bags, they get a very close inspection
I wonder why it is that they suspect them
They’re dying to add me to their collection
And I don’t know if they’ll let me go
If the Rolling Stones weren’t initially the bad boys that evil genius Andrew Loog Oldham had originally posited them as — in order to separate them from The Beatles, who ironically kinda were — fame and fortune and the accompanying temptations of such turned the publicity into reality, as their concerts devolved into riots and they were busted for pissing on a garage wall because they were turned away from the actual loos.
And not so very long after Between The Buttons came out, there would be a tabloid-fueled raid on Keith Richards’s country house that was life-changing for everybody involved, and would directly lead to some great songs and a dodgy album.
But that was all in the future. In the present, Keith had one simple problem: he couldn’t get to where he needed to be. Which, honestly is right out of my most common kind of nightmares: I can’t get where I need to go.
Connection, I just can’t make no connection
But all I want to do is to get back to you
And whether or not the connection was a person or a flight and whether or not the “youuuu” was his connection or his baby, well, that was just part of the beautiful ambiguity of the whole thing. And it certainly wouldn’t be the last time that the Stones would write a drug song that could be a love song or a love song that could be a drug song.
“Connection”
“Connection” live in Amsterdam, 1995
“Connection” by Keith Richards & The X-Pensive Winos, 1988
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