Rolling Stones songs: Already Over Me
*Click for MORE ROLLING STONES SONGS 1962-PRESENT

Hard to hold on to a love divine/ I’m kneeling in a corner praying to your shrine…

Written by: Jagger/Richards
Recorded: Ocean Way Recording Studios, Hollywood, USA, March 13-July 1997
Guest musicians: Jim Keltner (percussion), Don Was (bass), Benmont Tench (keyboards), Kenny Aronoff (bucket), Blondie Chaplin (piano and background vocals), Bernard Fowler (background vocals)
*Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012

From the The Rolling Stones – All the Songs book:
This is another meditation from the Stones on the breakup of a couple.
You’re so cold/You’re so cruel/I’m your man/Not your fool: the words speak
for themselves. The originality of the song resides above all in its
atmosphere: “It was like a Babyface ballad put on top of ‘Wild Horses,’”
explains the producer Don Was. In a 1997 interview, the Stones singer
describes the genesis of this song that he had initially begun working on
with Babyface (Kenneth Edmonds): “‘It was really my fault—I threw the
wrong song at him,” Jagger says of Babyface. “We went in and wrote the
loops and the programs. We got Charlie to play on it. And in the end, I
didn’t like the way it was looped. I said, ‘Kenny, leave it. I’m gonna do it
another way.’” “Already Over Me” was cut live in the studio. The band
would perform the song onstage during the 1997–1998 tour.

In the end, as we have seen, the band adopted a more traditional approach
to the album version of “Already Over Me.” Right from the intro, Mick
Jagger plunges us into a mellow, although somewhat somber, atmosphere,
his strummed guitar accompanied by Blondie Chaplin’s piano and Benmont
Tench’s keyboard pads. Charlie Watts taps his cymbals before attacking the
rhythm more forcefully at 0:40, underpinned by Don Was’s bass. The
producer would later report that it took him a while to understand the
unusual way in which Charlie operated, the way he infused a number with
an inimitable groove by taking his cue from and constructing his drumming
around the singer. Keith plays a rhythm accompaniment as well as two very
good solos, at 1:59 and 3:41. Meanwhile, Ron Wood innovates by playing a
superb Dobro part with bottle-neck, before switching to a rhythm part with
pronounced vibrato on a baritone guitar, most probably a Fender Jaguar or a
Danelectro, a guitar that was very popular with the surf music bands of the
early sixties. Benmont Tench also plays the Hammond C-3 organ, which
can be heard from 1:10. Kenny Aronoff is credited as playing the bucket,
the vessel in question being diverted from its primary function and used as a
percussion instrument, although it should be pointed out that it is
impossible to hear. The mixing is by Bob Clearmountain and is his only
contribution to the album.