It was 1981, and the Rolling Stones were stuck. They had committed to a massive summer tour, and they didn’t want to waste the opportunity to promote a new record, Esquire reports
But Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were fighting—barely speaking, much less writing any new songs—and the clock was ticking. “There was no time to make a whole new album and make the start of the tour,” said Richards, in 1993.
The band’s longtime engineer, Chris Kimsey, came up with an elegant solution. They had released five albums in the previous seven years, so maybe, he reasoned, there were enough worthy outtakes or unfinished drafts to assemble a record.
“I spent three months going through like the last four, five albums finding stuff that had been either forgotten about or, at the time, rejected,” said Kimsey in a 1982 interview. “And then I presented it to the band and I said, ‘Hey, look, guys, you’ve got all this great stuff sitting in the can and it’s great material, do something with it.’"
The result, released forty years ago, was Tattoo You—ultimately, one of the most curious entries in the Rolling Stones’ discography. It was the last album by the band to hit Number One on the US charts
Tattoo You it’s not just the reworked Goats Head Soup, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll and Black and Blue cast-offs that made Tattoo You a keeper; it was also the Stones’ renewed energy and creative rebirth following that so-so trio of albums (which really had no chance of stacking up to the exalted run started with 1968’s Beggars Banquet and continued through 1972’s career-peaking Exile on Main St.). Some Girls, the 1978 LP that got them out of the rut, went as far as to borrow inspiration and sounds from the music that was making the Rolling Stones obsolete as the decade neared its end, including punk and disco.
The Rolling Stones: Tattoo You 40th anniversary
Nine tracks earmarked during the sessions but eventually abandoned were completed by the band, freshened up with new vocals by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ guitars.
The Tattoo You box set would continue the Stones’ recent trend of reissuing their classic albums with unheard bonus material. In 2020, the iconic band unveiled an expanded edition for their 1973 album Goats Head Soup with three previously unreleased tracks. Likewise, 2010’s Exile on Main Street reissue featured 10 unearthed songs from the band’s vaults, updated, overdubbed and released for the first time.
“Me and Mick have done nine new tracks for the [40th anniversary] re-release of ‘Tattoo You’. (Ronnie Wood)
Released in August of 1981, the original LP was largely composed of studio outtakes recorded during the 1970s, with new vocals and instrumental parts added on to fully complete the tracks. Though the material spanned nearly a decade — and featured recordings from more than half a dozen sessions — the collection worked impressively well together. Lead single “Start Me Up” became one of the band’s most identifiable songs, while “Neighbours” and “Waiting on a Friend” were further stand-out tracks. Tattoo You would go on to sell more than 4 million copies in the U.S.
