The Rolling Stones Top 75 Countdown (#12-10)

Hello everybody, for yet another Rolling Stones day. Let's get on with it!

At #12 we find the last Rolling Stones' song that is not written by the songwriting duo of Jagger-Richards. Love in Vain (originally Love in Vain Blues) is a Blues song written by American master musician Robert Johnson. He sings of unrequited love, using a departing train as a metaphor for his loss. Johnson's performance – vocal accompanied by his finger-style acoustic guitar playing – has been described as "devastatingly bleak". He recorded the song in 1937 during his last recording session and in 1939, it was issued as the last of his original 78 rpm records. Here's his version:

The Rolling Stones recorded Love in Vain for their 1969 album, Let It Bleed. This aching version is no doubt its most famous cover. Recast with a honky-tonk feel, Jagger wrings pain from the lyrics, and Taylor sets his slide guitar on stun. "I was in awe sometimes listening to Mick Taylor, especially on that slide," writes Richards in his memoir, paying respect where it's due.

As for the history of the song, Keith Richards recalls:

For a time we thought the songs that were on that first album [King of the Delta Blues] were the only recordings (Robert Johnson had) made, and then suddenly around '67 or '68 up comes this second (bootleg) collection that included Love in Vain. Love in Vain was such a beautiful song. Mick and I both loved it, and at the time I was working and playing around with Gram Parsons, and I started searching around for a different way to present it, because if we were going to record it there was no point in trying to copy the Robert Johnson style or ways and styles. We took it a little bit more country, a little bit more formalized, and Mick felt comfortable with that. Here's the Let It Bleed version:

Here they are, live in Texas in 1972:

At #11 is the famous follow-up to that monster hit that made them megastars. They needn't have worried: Get Off Of My Cloud, released on September 1965, peaked at #1 in the US, the UK, Germany and Canada, #2 in Ireland, Australia, the Netherlands and Norway, #5 in Austria, #6 in Belgium and #7 in France.

"Satisfaction was a great record. Get off of My Cloud, even better record," Neil Young enthused in the biography Shakey. "Looser, less of a hit. More of a reckless abandon." The Stones followed up (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction with a rebel yell against America, fame, phone calls, apartment buildings, other people and all manner of cloud-hogging modern hassles. Watts' stomping drum intro leads into Richards and Jones' vicious twin-guitar attack. The band was actually gunning for a slower song, à la funky New Orleans soul man Lee Dorsey. Instead, it ended up with a version that "rocked it up," in the words of Richards. Jagger's lyrics – which allude to leaving his car unattended only to find parking tickets "like a flag stuck on my window screen" – were some of the most evocative he'd written at that time. True to form, when complimented on them a few years later, he tersely said, "Oh, no, they're not – they're crap."

Here's the original:

... And here's a live version:

We've finally reached the Top 10. At #10 is Ruby Tuesday: the song came to Richards after he was painfully jilted by girlfriend Linda Keith, who soon took up with Jimi Hendrix. Yet the song is more of a nod to the hippie-era female free spirit than an angry blues rant or tortured kiss-off. Just as surprisingly, the ballad is not defined by Richards' guitar but by Jones' plaintive recorder, along with the piano of Jack Nitzsche and an upright bass fingered by Wyman, bowed by Richards. "It's just a really nice melody, and a really nice lyric," Jagger said years later. "Neither of which I wrote. But I always enjoy singing it."

The song peaked at #1 in the US, #2 in Canada, #3 in the UK and Australia, and #6 in Ireland. Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song #310 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The song title was the source of the restaurant chain of the same name. Here it is:

Melanie released the song four years later and had a Top 10 UK hit with it. Here she is from The Ed Sullivan Show in 1971:

More great Rolling Stones songs tomorrow. See you then!