Mick Jagger admitted the Rolling Stones "provoked a lot of people" in response to controversial hit 'Brown Sugar' being axed from their setlists.
Listen to the unreleased version of The Rolling Stones ‘Brown Sugar’ with Eric Clapton on slide guitar.
The Stones have removed the song from their concerts for reasons, it seems, racial. But Brown Sugar has nothing to do with political correctness. It's a hard raw song, one of the best in the band's repertoire. Now some dickhead has started a policy against, without knowing why and wherefore, to the point that Mick and Keith had to take the song off their show lineup.
We all know that Brown Sugar stands for heroin, and we all know that the British have black slave deportation from Africa to their American colonies. What do they want now? Let the music free, and brown Sugar is freedom
The music legend admitted they were good at causing "shock and awe" back in the day, but he accepts that things need to "change". (Music-News)
Speaking on Swedish radio station P4, he said: "The early days were the days of shock and awe, things can't stay like that forever. When you start out, I mean popular music is always in need of shaking up. We were quite good at that. We had our own style and our own way of approaching things and we had a different way of behaving. And it provoked a lot of people."
"I thought a lot of it was super over-reaction but it became a bit of a cliché.
Earlier this year Billy Joel paid tribute to Charlie Watts Friday with a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” during his concert in Cincinnati, Just to make a point o view straight.
The Rolling Stones’ decision to drop the song Brown Sugar from the setlist of their US tour has been hailed as a victory, with previous performances of the hit labelled insensitive and a “prime example of entitlement”.
The 1971 hit is widely considered to have one of the greatest guitar riffs in history, but its success is thought to have overshadowed the song’s references to slavery, sex and drugs.
Critics have said the track – the band’s second most played song on tour after Jumpin’ Jack Flash – contains “some of the most stunningly crude and offensive lyrics that have ever been written” and that it is “gross, sexist, and stunningly offensive towards black women”.
Guitarist Keith Richards confirmed the decision not to perform the song to the LA Times but said he was confused by the backlash it had received over time.
The Rolling Stones’ decision to drop the song Brown Sugar from the setlist of their US tour has been hailed as a victory, with previous performances of the hit labelled insensitive and a “prime example of entitlement”.
The 1971 hit is widely considered to have one of the greatest guitar riffs in history, but its success is thought to have overshadowed the song’s references to slavery, sex and drugs.
Critics have said the track – the band’s second most played song on tour after Jumpin’ Jack Flash – contains “some of the most stunningly crude and offensive lyrics that have ever been written” and that it is “gross, sexist, and stunningly offensive towards black women”.
Guitarist Keith Richards confirmed the decision not to perform the song to the LA Times but said he was confused by the backlash it had received over time.
Meanwhile, Joel and his band played an abbreviated version of the Sticky Fingers classic, telling the Great American Ball Park crowd “That’s for Charlie” before segueing into his own hit “Big Shot.”
This news comes after concerns about the 50-year-old song’s reference to the “horrors of slavery” and other controversial topics.
The last time the English rock band performed “Brown Sugar” was at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, Florida in 2019.
When asked about the absence of the song from their set on tour, Richards told the LA Times: “You picked up on that, huh?
“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is. Didn’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery?” he said. “But they’re trying to bury it. At the moment I don’t want to get into conflicts with all of this s***.”
