This Place Is Empty

Composers: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Recording date:
November-December 2004, March-April & June 2005
Recording locations:
La Fourchette, Posé sur Cisse, France & Ocean Way Recording Studios, Los Angeles, USA
Producers: Don Was
& The Glimmer Twins      Chief engineer: Krish Sharma
Mixer: Jack Joseph Puig
          Performed onstage: 2006

Line-up:

Drums: Charlie Watts
Bass: Keith Richards
Acoustic guitars: Keith Richards
Slide acoustic guitar: Mick Jagger
Pianos: Keith Richards & Don Was Don Was
Lead vocal: Keith Richards
Backing vocals: Keith Richards & Mick Jagger
 

Walk right in, sit on down
And make yourself at home
Come on, baby, you're just like me
And you hate to be alone

It's funny how things go around
It's crazy but it's true
This place is empty, oh so empty
It's empty without you

Come on, honey, bare your breasts
And make me feel at home
You and me we're just like all the rest
And we don't want to be alone

It's funny how things go around
But go around they do - mm
This place is empty, empty
So empty without you

Yeah, this place is empty, empty
So empty without you


Oh yeah - mm
It's empty without you

Mm mm-mm-mm


Come on, simmer down
And treat me sweet and cool
At least by now you, you have learnt
How to love a fool - ha


It's funny how things turn around
It's crazy but it's true
This place is empty, so empty
So empty without you

This place is empty, oh so empty
So empty without you


 

TrackTalk

I like to surprise people. Hey, I grew up with (that Hoagy Carmichael/Cole Porter) thing, man! My mother played me jazz and all the standards. That stuff just drips off of me. My mother played me Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, Ellla Fitgerald, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie... It's just that rock and roll suddenly came along and totally diverted my attention.

- Keith Richards, July 2005


It's about Patti, but then it has that universal thing going on. I thought: There can't be anybody in the world who hasn't had this feeling. It was nice to keep it short - just three verses. I was flopped out on the couch with a drink and my acoustic guitar. I ended up playing piano on it, too.

- Keith Richards, August 2005


Yeah there's some deep stuff (on the album) but at the same time, humor is absolutely important to a rock and roll record. When you think about the first rock and roll records, you hear Great Balls of Fire and Poison Ivy and Along Came Jones and a lot of Chuck Berry, and there's a lot of humor in it. And it has to sort of balance out. I mean, I really hate the dirges. I like it better to make you laugh in one line and make you cry in the next.

- Keith Richards, July 2005, told the song
is heavy at times


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