What are some of your favorite songs by the Rolling Stones that aren’t exceptionally well known? Something the casual fan wouldn’t know, something that you won’t get by asking Alexa to play The Rolling Stones?
I’ll start with the excellent Going Home, first heard when I bought the USA version of Aftermath. Funny that I bought the album when I was still a high school student and I always thought Aftermath as meaning after math class!!
In which they impersonate a jug band:
I’ve always liked “Dear Doctor”.
“For the girl I’m to marry is a bow legged sow.
I’ve been soaking up drink like a sponge”
Not super obscure but not the first Stones song that leaps to most peoples mind when they think of RS songs.
I have no idea if it’s considered “obscure,” but it think it’s interesting because Lennon and McCartney sing backup:
We Love You is one of my favorite Stones songs. Charlie Watts on the drums is amazing. It did make their greatest hits album Big Hits and Fazed Cookies, but that album is all over the place with the song selection. I still listen to rock radio a lot and I’d definitely say We Love You qualifies as obscure.
I don’t know if this would be my answer if I took all the time I needed to carefully consider the question, but the first thing that came to mind was this one.
I don’t know which tracks are considered obscure, but there are songs I like on side two of 1967’s Between the Buttons. Such as “Miss Amanda Jones”.
My favorite track when I first got Aftermath in 1966 was Out Of Time.
It was the ultimate obscure track, having never been performed live, until this tour. It was first played live on the first of this month in Madrid.
Is “Before They Make Me Run” obscure? Ever since it was included on a mix tape from my high school friend, it has rocketed to the top of my favorite Rolling Stones songs:
I’m not a big Stones fan, so I have no idea how many songs other than this and “Happy” Keith Richards sings on, but this is a hella fun and rocking tune.
Memo From Turner
This thread Cockblocks an experiment I was gonna pull on the Dope. I was gonna create a “Five Song Challenge” (using the Stones) with a strict limit on five specific titles. The real thing was to see how many posts it took for someone to post a giant list, with excuses for… whatever. Anyway, my bet was on under 10. But I would have never got around to actually making a thread. So, my answer is Memo From Turner
This is a link to the Stones page on Setlist.fm, where there are many ways to see how often they’ve played a song in concert. (By album, by songs most often played, by songs in alphabetical order, etc.)
Looks like “Before They Make Me Run” is #18 on that list, so a bit more popular than I would have thought. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard that song on the radio. Played more often than “Angie,” “Beast of Burden,” “Ruby Tuesday,” “Shattered,” “Under My Thumb,” “Get Off My Cloud,” “She’s So Cold,” “Wild Horses,” etc., all that I’ve heard countless times on radio. Perhaps they wanted to mix in more Keith songs in concert. Or perhaps the stations around here don’t play any of his songs other than “Happy.”
If I go by their concert setlist “She’s a Rainbow” at #144 would be my pick.
I don’t know if you can call this one obscure but I’ve only really discovered it in the last few years. It definitely is one of the more underrated Stones songs.
Time Waits for No One
Gonna have to go with the song they recorded specifically for the purpose of being unreleasable.
Some may argue that this one is not obscure enough, but I’ll go with “Dance Little Sister”:
Dance Little Sister (Remastered) - YouTube
mmm
Assuming “Stray Cat Blues” is not obscure enough, I would go with “Ventilator Blues.” From Wikipedia: “The Rolling Stones have performed “Ventilator Blues” live only once, at Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver, British Columbia, on opening night of the 1972 North American Tour in support of Exile on Main Street .”
I have never thought “That’s How Strong My Love is” was one of their better songs (or covers), but it has grown on me a bit over the years:
I’m a big Stones fan so some songs that may be obscure for casual listeners are deeply ingrained in my mind. My favorite album is Sticky Fingers which has several deep album cuts that are rarely played live or on the radio, so I pick one of the least Stones-like cuts, the album closer “Moonlight Mile”. It’s a fantastic track with a dream-like atmosphere, augmented by the great strings arranged by Paul Buckmaster. It was all Jagger’s song, Keith doesn’t even play on it. Also great drums by Charlie and slide by Mick Taylor.
Mine is likely not nearly as obscure as the others here, but it’s “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking.”
I’m by no means a big Stones fan, nor am I well-versed in all of their album tracks, but I’ve listened to “classic rock” radio since the '80s, and feel like I’ve heard a lot of Stones songs.
Even so, I had never heard “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” until I discovered it on the Guitar Hero II video game.
Yeah, “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” is another deep cut of Sticky Fingers that deserves a mention. It never was planned this way, the long jam at the end was spontaneous and unrehearsed. We can be tankful that someone (Jimmy Miller?) left the tape rolling.