#and we literally spent all day together we'd play in the gardens and run about the place and we were both really outdoorsy

[hella1975]

hella I keep getting edits with some sort of original version of waiting room?? on my fyp and I'm gonna be honest waiting room wasn't a song that did me in quite as badly as the rest of you but this version I keep hearing literally rips my heart straight open😭😭 like I've been planning on fixing the no waiting room on spotify issue by taking it into my own hands🏴‍☠️ but now I know it's gonna have to be this version I'm not even bothering with lost ark waiting room. it's just gonna be waiting room og bc what the fuck?? "I never grew up with you, and you're not my waiting room" what the fuck??? with the haunting background noises literally WHAT THE FUCK????????

OMG IVE SEEN THAT ONE everyone keeps going on about the vocals of 'and you're not my waiting room' but i really cant get over 'i never grew up with you' like what??? WHAT??????

#for some reason i rlly connected this song to a childhood friend of mine that im pretty sure ive at least vaguely mentioned on here before #but basically we were INSEPERABLE for years of my childhood and he was about 2 years older than me #so i think i was 5 and he was 7 when we met and we stayed friends until i went up to secondary school so SIX YEARS #and we literally spent all day together we'd play in the gardens and run about the place and we were both really outdoorsy #and obvs it was before proper tech really started coming in so it was when kids literally just got shoved outside for the day #and left to their own devices and it was GREAT like i remember him and that time so fondly #but he was also really messed up like he'd come from a lot of foster homes and he'd had every kind of abuse #and he'd finally been adopted by the couple on my street who just couldn't handle him bc their answer to his issues #was to spoil him and give him what he wanted so he just got worse bc he had a real violent streak in him #and obvs if you let that grow in a boy they're not gonna wake up one day and it'll be gone like. it's going to get malicious #and low and behold he started getting like actually dangerous like he choked his sister once and he got kicked out of school #bc he threated to BEHEAD A GIRL WITH AN AXE like really fucked up shit #but i was in a pick me moment bc he was always really nice and respectful to me until he wasnt #and even then ive never ever blamed him for it bc we were both young and he was so traumatised #and sooner or later we stopped hanging out and my mum was relieved bc that's how bad he was getting #and ive literally never spoken to him again. but he's just one of those people i think about all the time???? #like idk if it's bc of what went down or bc of the age i was but he was a HUGE deal to me and my development #and for some evil fucking reason i think of him when i listen to waiting room especially the 'i know it's for the better' #bc i KNOW it's for the better i got away from him before he got really bad but still i so desperately wish i couldve helped him yk? #especially now i understand what abuse actually means and what he'd suffered which i had no idea about at the time #SO TO ADD 'I NEVER GREW UP WITH YOU' WHEN I FEEL LIKE I ABANDONED HIM AS CHILDREN?? STOPPPP #PHOEBE PLEASEEEE #anyway unnecessary rant over rori pls pirate this song for the masses pls pls the world needs you #ask

[waugh-bao]

what’s the lore about voodoo 👀

@agentidiot 1993-5 was…wild.

The origin of the album, according to Charlie:

“We spent three months there [in Barbados]. Mick and Keith were there first and then I joined them and we just played. So by the time we got into the recording studio, we could play something and you'd go, ‘Oh, I remember that... I did this and that on it.’ You're already a third of a way to getting it together by doing that."

Which all sounds pretty benign, they’ve done albums in a particular place away from the UK pretty much since Exile. But the outtakes from those sessions are downright insane (so much so that I can only mention a handful here, there are many more I didn’t even have room for).

Probably best example of this is a song called “Alteration Boogie.” It’s 5 straight minutes of Keith singing about Charlie’s clothes and his body, which starts out with him making fun of how old fashioned his taste in tailoring is (in a very detailed way) and ends with two comments about Charlie’s ass and a comment about how “cute” he looks in blue.

Then there’s “Sparks Will Fly.” That song actually did make it to the album, but in a radically different form than it started out. So Keith wrote it:

“We had a big bonfire going one night out in Ronnie’s garden. I was throwing all these logs on it, and these sparks started flying. I started running backto the studio – ‘I’ve got one! Incoming!’ Charlie was the only guy there, and he and I played the thing. “

And he and Charlie were the only two who worked on it until it was completed:

"Sparks Will Fly was actually eyeball-to-eyeball with Charlie Watts more than anybody to start with, because we would not let anybody else play on it until we'd honed down that rhythm track thing dead right. You know, it was like, three's a crowd for a minute, until we'd worked it out. And then we let everybody else in. It all has to do with the rhythm and the guitar, and after that the rest of it fell into place. Charlie's laying down the law on that one. You've got to know a guy so well to play that tight together. It's unspoken, because it's all going by in front of you in 3 seconds."

The lyrics of that song, especially when you consider the context in which it was written, are somehow maybe even more crazy (and suspicious) than “Alteration Boogie.”

Mick ended up completely overhauling the lyrics, but his weren’t any better. Of particular note at the time was his decision to include the line “I’m gonna fuck your sweet ass”, which he claimed after the fact he didn’t even remember doing.

Oh yeah, and Keith’s thing about Charlie “laying down the law” was pretty literal. Charlie was playing him every night during album recording and rehearsals to the point of actually being on his knees, which Keith bragged to the press about.

“According to Don Was [their producer], Charlie was the driving force behind these rehearsals. They started each night around 10 p.m. and finished 10 or 12 hours later, whenever Keith collapsed, but Charlie was still going strong.”

“To me, it was all tied in with Charlie. If Charlie Watts is willing to experiment in the studio, then I’m the happiest man in the world.”

Coincidentally, Keith was also very eager to tell everyone about Mick’s private practice sessions with Charlie (who also bragged himself about his closeness to the drummer in this period and some of the songs they collaborated on):

“The more that Mick plays [the harmonica], the more differently he sings. Suddenly he starts to sing the way he's playing the harp, phrasing differently, instead of thinking of it as two separate entities, you know...And he played all year. He would do 2 hours a day with Charlie just playing harp, before we'd even come into rehearsal or whatever. And I can hear it paying off a lot in his singing too.”

And another one of the songs which made it onto the album, “Suck on The Jugular”, which Keith was dying to credit to Charlie (he literally credits Charlie with the success of every song on this album):

“Mr Watts again. I mean, it's all drums. The arrangement is all to do with the drums. Charlie laid down that beat and I said, 'Well, if you can keep that up for several minutes, we've got a track! 'Hey, no problem? And he always makes it look like it isn't.”

Has these lyrics:

The fun didn’t stop when they finished the album, though.

They made a music video for the song “I Go Wild” which can only be described as steampunk Marie Antoinette meets geriatric gay BDSM. (Mick is literally in some kind of chain link sex swing for part of it, Keith seems to have a gag in his mouth at point, and they’re both dancing around Charlie. He even goes so far as to bend down in front of the kit and mimic giving oral s*x).

The band has since disowned the video, it appears on none of their official sites or YouTube channel, but you can find it here.

In the interviews which surrounded the actual Voodoo Tour, Keith was very adamant about how close the “trio” were and how much they were enjoying each other’s company:

“Even when we’re not touring or recording we stay in touch. We’re all so close - like a family. In fact, we’re probably closer than a lot of families are.”

There was a video game released on CD-ROM to support the tour, which includes a section where the player enters a bathroom where Keith makes a variety of sexual comments, screams, and then comments on Charlie “peaking”: here.

A documentary about the album and tour made by MTV has also since been memory holed and only promos for it can be found any longer.

Other than that, I suppose I should mention that this was also the era of Keith kissing Charlie on stage and both of them giving him flowers:

As well as the return of the “nipple pincher” bit:

But, more than anything, it was truly a period, despite occasional disagreements, of real closeness and sweetness between those three:

#thank you for coming to my overlong and probably not very exciting Ted Talk #the rolling stones #charlie watts #keith richards #old married band #mick jagger #voodoo lounge #there’s also extracts from another documentary of Ronnie rolling his eyes at them getting along ‘too well’ #and footage of Keith playing the maracas behind Charlie while pumping his hips #it was truly an indescribable era #ask response #agentidiot