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There’s many a bar-room queen I’ve had in Jackson/ But I just can’t seem to drink you off my mind…
Written by: Jagger/Richard Recorded: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England, May 12-June 5 and Sunset Sound Studios, Los Angeles, USA, Nov. 2-3 1969 *Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012 Mick Jagger: vocals Keith Richards: guitar, backing vocals Mick Taylor: slide guitar Charlie Watts: drums Guest musicians: Byron Berline (fiddle), Nannette Workman (backing vocals), Sam Cutler (car horn)
Country Honk sits in a strange and fascinating corner of The Rolling Stones’ catalog. Released in 1969 on Let It Bleed, the track feels less like a polished album centerpiece and more like a dusty postcard from the band’s creative journey. Loose, acoustic, and slightly mischievous, it reveals the raw country roots behind one of the Stones’ most famous songs.
Before Honky Tonk Women exploded as a swaggering rock hit, its spirit actually lived inside this quieter, rougher version. With fiddle, acoustic guitar, and a laid-back groove, Country Honk leans deeply into the American country-blues tradition that had long fascinated Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
What makes the song especially intriguing is its backstory. Written during a trip through Brazil by Jagger and Richards, the tune captures a moment when the band stepped away from London studios and found inspiration in unexpected places. The result is a relaxed, rootsy snapshot of the Stones experimenting with sound, style, and storytelling.
More about Country Honkby The Rolling Stones
*By Marcelo Sonaglioni
Country Honk: The Looser, Wilder Twin of Honky Tonk Women
Amid the vast and often thunderous catalogue of the Rolling Stones Country Honk occupies a curious, almost mischievous corner. It is not loud, not sleek, and certainly not designed to conquer radio. Instead, it ambles in with dusty boots, acoustic strings, and the faint sound of a car horn drifting by. Released in 1969 on Let It Bleed, the track feels like a private joke left on a public record—a reminder that the Stones were as fascinated by roots and tradition as they were by swagger and excess. Long before Honky Tonk Women became one of the band’s most enduring hits,Country Honk existed as its original blueprint: looser, rougher, and steeped in country blues. What makes the song remarkable is not just its sound, but its attitude. It resists polish, embraces imperfection, and captures the Stones in motion—geographically, creatively, and stylistically—at a moment when they were redefining what their music could be.
A song born far from london
The origins of Country Honkare inseparable from escape. In mid-December 1968, just after rehearsals for The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards left England for a three-week journey through South America with their girlfriends Marianne Faithfull and Anita Pallenberg. Brazil and Peru offered distance from schedules, studios, and expectations. Their stay at a ranch in Matão, in Brazil’s São Paulo state, became unexpectedly productive. Richards later recalled how he and Jagger wrote the song sitting on a veranda, “like cowboys” boots resting on the rail, imagining themselves somewhere between Texas and myth.
The setting mattered. Richards remembered the song being written on an acoustic guitar, shaped by its surroundings rather than any commercial ambition. Even the odd detail of black blind frogs leaping out of the toilet became part of the memory, reinforcing the sense that Country Honk was tied to place, not polish. Richards has consistently maintained that this was how Honky Tonk Women was originally written, before electricity, volume, and swagger transformed it into a hit.
Keith Richards: “We were headed for the Mato Grosso*. We lived for a few days on a ranch, where Mick and I wrote Country Honk sitting on a veranda like cowboys, boots on the rail, thinking ourselves in Texas.” Richards added, “It was written on an acoustic guitar,” he recalls, “and I remember the place because every time you flushed the john these black blind frogs came jumping out—an interesting image.” *Keith confuses it, that was actually Matão, they’ve never actually visited Mato Grosso
Country blues and american ghosts
At its coreCountry Honkis a salute to American country blues and honky-tonk tradition. Its title nods directly to Hank Williams’ Honky Tonk Blues, and its spirit draws heavily from Williams and Jimmie Rodgers, two figures who helped define the emotional grammar of country music. The Stones had long absorbed American influences, but here they leaned into them openly, stripping the song down to fiddle, acoustic guitar, and rhythm.
Lyrically Country Honk closely mirrors Honky Tonk Women. Both unfold in a bar where alcohol flows freely and troubles are temporarily forgotten. The most telling change is geographical: the electric single opens in Memphis, Tennessee, while Country Honk shifts the scene to Jackson, Mississippi. It’s a small adjustment, but one that tilts the song further south, nudging it deeper into blues territory. The result is less punchline, more porch swing—a narrative that feels lived-in rather than performed.
Keith Richards: “On Let It Bleed we put that other version of Honky Tonk Women on because that’s how the song was originally written, as a real Hank Williams/Jimmie Rodgers ’30s country song. And it got turned around to this other song by Mick Taylor, who got into a completely different feel, throwing it off the wall completely.”
Capturing the sound on tape
Recording Country Honk proved as unconventional as its origins. The track was recorded at Olympic Studios, with additional work done at Elektra. Byron Berline, a bluegrass virtuoso, provided the fiddle that defines the song’s character. Berline later said Gram Parsons was responsible for bringing him into the session, a detail that underscores Parsons’ quiet but growing influence on the Stones during this period.
Producer Glyn Johns encouraged Berline to record his fiddle part outside, on the pavement, to capture natural ambience. Passing traffic became part of the texture. The car horn heard on the track was reportedly performed by tour manager Sam Cutler. Keith Richards strummed an acoustic Gibson Hummingbird, while Charlie Watts played softly, recessed in the mix. Mick Taylor, still new to the band, added slide guitar using a cheap Selmer Hawaiian guitar played on his lap. Backing vocals came from Nanette Workman, though her presence is subtle enough to be almost ghostlike. A bootleg version exists without the fiddle or slide guitar, revealing just how skeletal the song once was.
Mick Taylor: “My part on Country Honk wasn’t on a regular guitar; it was on one of those cheap little Selmer Hawaiian guitars, which I played on my lap in regular tuning.”
An odd choice on Let It Bleed
When Let It Bleed was released in 1969, it conspicuously excluded Honky Tonk Women, despite the single being one of the Rolling Stones’ biggest hits. Instead, listeners found Country Honk—a slower, ragged, country-inflected reinterpretation. It sounded more like a demo than a definitive statement, with Mick Jagger’s vocals oddly buried in the mix. For some, the decision felt baffling.
Speculation followed. Perhaps the Stones were inspired by the Beatles’ habit of releasing radically different versions of the same song. Perhaps Gram Parsons’ influence nudged them toward something more overtly country. Or perhaps the band simply enjoyed the perversity of choosing the less commercial path. Whatever the reason, Country Honk remains an anomaly: not as powerful as its electric counterpart, but invaluable as a window into the Stones’ creative process. It captures the band at a crossroads—restless, curious, and unafraid to leave rough edges exposed.
Keith Richards (1982): “Country Honk was the original way Mick and I wrote Honky Tonk Women and sang it. That was the song as far as we were concerned. Then we said, ‘Ah, that’s great, it should be a single’. So we cut it with the band and made it sort of funky, drums, organized it for the band. But we were still interested in doing it the way that we originally thought of it – a sort of Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, early pre-Nashville sound. I always loved Merle Haggard.”
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