Album: Exile on Main Street (Reissue)
Year: 2010
. . .
Now I know what you’re saying: how come “Claudine” which was an extra track on the Some Girls deluxe counted as a 1978 recording, but this Exile on Main St outtake counts as 2010 recording?
First of all: my blog, my rules. But, honestly, it’s really this: while “Claudine” was essentially the same song they’d cut in 1978, “Plundered My Soul” is essentially a 1971 backing track with 2009 overdubs.
And so “Plundered My Soul” is built on a jam featuring Keith Richards, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts and Nicky Hopkins. It’s a quintessential Stones mid-tempo groove, featuring a bunch of stops and starts. And from that, Mick Jagger basically built the rest of the song.
Can you believe it
I’ve won no medals in this love game
I’ve been resting on my laurels
I’m a bad loser, I’m a yard off my paceI smell rubber and I soon discover
That you’re gone for good
My indiscretions made a bad impression
Guess I was misunderstood
Obviously Mick’s voice had changed significantly in the intervening decades. So has yours. And so he doesn’t even really try to channel his younger self, double-tracking himself on the verses, and adding Lisa Fischer and Cindy Mizell on the chorus.
I thought you needed my loving
But it’s my heart that you stole
I thought you wanted my money
But you plundered my soul
Plundered my soul
It’s actually a pretty killer chorus, featuring not one, but two full stop-and-starts featuring some nice bass runs from Bill Wyman. But of course, the star of “Plundered My Soul” is Mick Taylor, convinced by Jagger to come back and add lead guitar to the lost Exile songs they were trying to breathe new life into. And while it really only works on “Plundered My Soul,” it’s an absolute pleasure to hear Taylor adding his magic one last time.
Oh, and Bobby Keys is also on the track, though whether or not his sax was part of the original sessions or overdubbed at the same time as Taylor is a bit of a mystery. And in the end, it doesn’t even matter all that much: from my perspective “Plundered My Soul” hits all of the pleasure centers that any great Stones song from any era.
And that’s a wrap for the Rolling Stones, which because of the combination of how great, how prolific and how much they meant to me is probably the deepest I will go on for any artist in Certain Songs. (Though if I go back and do the early bits of the alphabet that I underserved in the early days, it could be Bob Dylan. We’ll see.)
In any event, thanks to everyone who enjoyed this long long detour. And finally, while I’ve been reading about the Stones for decades, obviously I did a lot of research before and during the writing of all of these posts and so here is a listing of all of the websites I consulted for fact-checking and analysis, and all the books I read for stories, in case I’ve whetted your appetite.
Websites:
- The Rolling Stones Discography on Wikipedia
- The Rolling Stones Discography on Discogs
- The Complete Works of the Rolling Stones 1962-2021
- The Rolling Stones Discography on AllMusic
- Robert Christgau on the Rolling Stones
- Greil Marcus on The Rolling Stones
- Pitchfork on The Rolling Stones
Bibliography:
- Roy Carr – The Rolling Stones Illustrated Record
- Philippe Margotin – The Rolling Stones All The Songs: The Story Behind Every Track
- Bill Janovitz – Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell The Story of The Rolling Stones
- Keith Richards – Life
- Phillip Norman – Mick Jagger
- Stanley Booth – The True Adventures of The Rolling Stones
- Rich Cohen – The Sun & The Moon & The Rolling Stones
- Robert Greenfield – S.T.P.: A Journey Through America With The Rolling Stones
- Nathan Bracket – The New Rolling Stone Album Guide
- Bill Wyman – Stone Alone: The Story of A Rock ‘n’ Roll Band
- Stephen Davis – Old Gods Almost Dead: The Forty Year Odyssey of The Rolling Stones
- Robert Greenfield – Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell With The Rolling Stones
- Bill Janovitz – Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street (33 1/3)
- John Perry – Classic Rock Albums: Exile on Main Street
- Mike Edison – Sympathy For The Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters
- Tony Sanchez – Up and Down with The Rolling Stones
- Joel Selvin – Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day
- Patrick Humphries – Rolling Stones ’69
- Robert Greenfield – Ain’t It Time We Said Goodbye: The Rolling Stones on the Road to Exile
- Cyrus R.K. Patell – The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls (33 1/3)</a>
- Glyn Johns – Sound Man: A Life Recording Hits with The Rolling Stones, The Who, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles , Eric Clapton, The Faces . . .
- Ed Ward – The History of Rock & Roll Volume 2: 1964-1977
- Michael Lydon – The Rolling Stones Discover America
- Victor Coelho, John Covach – The Cambridge Companion to the Rolling Stones
- Christopher McKittrick – Can’t Give it Away on Seventh Avenue: The Rolling Stones in New York City
“Plundered My Soul”
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