If you like this please consider supporting the site. Your donation helps to do what I do. Thank you!  *Donate here

Rolling Stones songs: Following the River
*Click for MORE ROLLING STONES SONGS 1962-PRESENT

My cards are on the table/ But the drinks have all run out…

Written by: Jagger/Richard
Recorded: Rolling Stones Mobile, Nellcote, France, Jun. 7-Dec. 19 1971; Sunset Sound Studios, Los Angeles, USA, Jan. 10-March 28 1972; Wally Heider Studios, Los Angeles, USA, March 24-25 1972
*Mixing, editing and overdubbing of original leftovers done in New York, Los Angeles and London studios, 2009
Guest musicians: Nicky Hopkins (piano), Lisa Fisher and Cindy Mizelle (backing vocals), David Campbell (strings arrangement)
*Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012

From Songfacts:
This piano-led ballad was an instrumental backing track languishing in the Rolling Stones’ archives, but was pulled from the band’s vault and re-recorded with an entirely new lyric for release on the 2010 update of their 1972 album, Exile on Main St..
Jagger said to The Sunday Times May 9, 2010 of the Nicky Hopkins original piano-led track: “I’ve always liked it, but I never quite knew what was going to happen to it.”

In another interview, Jagger added: “It’s a good feeling when it all comes together. There’s a track called ‘Following the River,’ which is a ballad. It’s a got beautiful piano on it, which I didn’t play. And I’d heard this before but it didn’t have any lyrics at all. I could hear different melodies but I didn’t know how I was going to get the melody to fit with this already existing track, which is very heavily piano…

…And when it came together, I was just singing onto it, I was putting it on the stereo and I was singing along, trying out different melody lines and trying out different words. And when it actually came together, it’s a very good moment, you know? There’s a moment – there’s a frustration, there’s a build-up of this [makes discouraged face], and then try, try, try, try, and there’s a moment when it really comes together for you.”