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Rolling Stones songs: Dead Flowers (alternate version)

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Well I hope you won’t see me in my ragged company, Well, you know I could never be alone…

Written by: Jagger/Richard
Recorded: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England, Dec. 15 1969-Apr. 24 1970
Guest musicians: Ian Stewart (piano)
*Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012

From the Rolling Stones – All the Songs, The Story Behind Every Track book:
“Dead Flowers” is one of the most pessimistic songs ever written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. In it they describe a relationship in the process of breaking apart between a melancholy man and a woman for whom everything seems to go right, who has become the queen of the underground. The final verse leaves no room for doubt: Well, when you’re sitting back in your rose-pink Cadillac… I’ll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon and another girl to take my pain away. The refrain is also utterly bleak, with a good dose of cynicism to boot: Send me dead flowers to my wedding, and I won’t forget to put roses on your grave. “Maybe this is the first Goth country song,” suggests Rennie Sparks (of The Handsome Family).
As so often in Rolling Stones songs, however, the words and the music are out of sync with each other. Mick Jagger tells this bleak story set to optimistic country and western music. Work started on the recording of “Dead Flowers” on December 15, 1969 at Olympic Sound Studios in London. This was less than ten days after the drama of Altamont. For this reason the tune can perhaps be seen as functioning as a kind of exorcism (while at the same time testifying to the influence of Gram Parsons)… dead flowers alternate