Contributing musicians: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Ron Wood, Ian Stewart, Mick Taylor, Nicky Hopkins, Billy Preston, Sugar Blue, Simon Kirke, Matt Clifford.

Living in the Heart of Love
Fiji Jim
Troubles A' Comin
Shame, Shame, Shame
Drift Away
It's a Lie
Come to the Ball
Fast Talking, Slow Walking
Start Me Up (Early Version)
 
   

Me and Mick have done nine new tracks for the re-release of Tattoo You.

It’s been such an adventure during lockdown to spend a month or so engaging again with songs that I’d completely forgotten about or ones that were placed on the back burner. I thought, Wow. Now is the time for these to come out again because they are timeless.

For this re-release, I just went through... the time frame is a very wide one because Tattoo You... was a lot of tracks recorded over a long period of time. So I had a long period of time to actually go into the archives and look to be faithful to the album; I had ages. I started looking in the Jamaica sessions all the way up to 1979, '80, where we were recording in Paris...

Well you're a fan and you're a critic, aren't you? (laughs) You're going like, I really like it 'cause you like, obviously you like what you've done. You go like: yeah, but is it good enough, or is it too much like something else, or does it have that special spark? Or something like that. You know, they've got to have energy these things, these kind of things. So to me it's about energy. If it doesn't have energy, then I just throw it out the window because I'm looking for some spark, you know.

I had to write the lyrics and finish the vocals. Then we had to do the guitar parts and the overdubs. There were a lot of tracks that had no top lines, like no tunes, they had no melody. But I mean I had to write tons of lyrics, there were tracks with no lyrics, but they were really good tracks!... So really what I did for these extra tracks was just do the same process I did on the original Tattoo You album (laughs). It was exactly the same thing.

Some of them – there’s no top line, no lyrics, they’re in bits and pieces... But I know how to do this now. You find a track that’s got a groove and if there’s an idea, you run with the idea and make some fun with it, do some extra things. It comes alive a bit more.

(When we do these outtake release projects), I say to Mick: Go on, play with it, and send it to me (laughs). And I say Yay or I say Nay.

I worked with Charlie - actually I did some stuff with him in the studio very recently. You know, while we were doing these Tattoo You things, Ronnie was in the studio, Charlie came into the studio. We did some work on Tattoo You, Charlie did some work - just a few (drum) fills and stuff like that. 

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