Rolling Stones (V): Hang Fire

Antes de seguir con otro de esos discos míticos stonianos, intercalo un temilla suelto que siempre me ha fascinado y que se encuentra en un buen disco, Tattoo You (1981), que suele figurar en bastantes hogares por Start me up, pero que nadie escucha habitualmente y se pierden maravilas como esta: Hang Fire, tema que fue single con Neighbours como cara B y cuya letra trata sobre la situación de muchos trabajadores en paro en la época de crisis económica en la Gran Bretaña de finales de los 70’s.

In the sweet old country where I come from

Nobody ever works

Yeah nothing gets done

We hang fire, we hang fire

You know marrying money is a full time job

I don’t need the aggravation

I’m a lazy slob

I hang fire, I hang fire

Hang fire, put it on the wire

We’ve got nothing to eat

We got nowhere to work

Nothing to drink

We just lost our shirts

I’m on the dole

We ain’t for hire

Say what the hell

Say what the hell, hang fire

Hang fire, hang fire, put it on the wire

Doo doo doo

here’s ten thousand dollars go have some fun

Put it all on at a hundred to one

Hang fire, hang fire, put it on the wire

Versión 1: estudio (ojo al modelito de Jagger en el video)

Versión 2: live in Hampton 1981

Jagger le contaba lo siguiente a Jan Wenner sobre Tatoo you:

WENNER: And then comes “Tattoo You.”

JAGGER: Yeah, that’s an old record. It’s all a lot of old tracks that I dug out. And it was very strange circumstances. [Producer] Chris Kimsey and I went through all the tracks from those two previous records. It wasn’t all outtakes; some of it was old songs. And then I went back and found previous ones like “Waiting on a Friend,” from “Goats Head Soup.” They’re all from different periods. Then I had to write lyrics and melodies. A lot of them didn’t have anything, which is why they weren’t used at the time – because they weren’t complete. They were just bits, or they were from early takes. And then I put them all together in an incredibly cheap fashion. I recorded in this place in Paris in the middle of the winter. And then I recorded some of it in a broom cupboard, literally, where we did the vocals. The rest of the band were hardly involved. And then I took it to [producer] Bob Clearmountain, who did this great job of mixing so that it doesn’t sound like it’s from different periods.

WENNER: I think it’s your most underrated record.

JAGGER: I think it’s excellent. But all the things I usually like, it doesn’t have. It doesn’t have any unity of purpose or place or time. What do you think?

WENNER: The playing is so precise on it, so sharp. The band sound is very modern. And it’s got “Start Me Up” on it.

JAGGER: Which is a track that was just forgotten about, a reject.

WENNER: And who wrote “Start Me Up”?

JAGGER: It was Keith’s great riff, and I wrote the rest. The funny thing was that it turned into this reggae song after two takes. And that take on “Tattoo You” was the only take that was a complete rock & roll take. And then it went to reggae completely for about 20 takes. And that’s why everyone said, “Oh, that’s crap. We don’t want to use that.” And no one went back to Take 2, which was the one we used, the rock track.