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Rolling Stones songs: Had It With You
You always seem to haunt me/ Always try to haunt me…
Written by: Jagger/Richards/Wood Recorded: Pathé Marconi Studios, Boulogne-Billancourt, France, Apr. 8-June 17 1985; RPM Studios, NYC, USA, July 16-Aug. 17 & Sept. 10-Oct. 15 1985; Right Track Studios, NYC, USA, Nov. 5-Dec. 15 1985 *Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012
Mick Jagger: vocals, harmonica Keith Richards: guitar Charlie Watts: drums Ron Wood: rhythm guitar, saxophone
Long before Had It with Youbecame one of the leanest tracks on Dirty Work, its emotional weight was already etched into Keith Richards’ memory. The words, he once revealed, came to him not in a studio, but while stranded with Ronnie Wood in the front room of Ronnie’s house in Chiswick, watching the Thames roll by in miserable weather. As they waited for the Dover ferry to start moving again so they could return to Paris, Keith found himself putting into words a frustration that ran far deeper than bad weather or travel delays. The song’s target was not a lover, nor some imagined antagonist—it was Mick Jagger himself. At that point in the mid-80s, Mick’s push for independence, especially after releasing She’s the Boss, cut Keith with the sharpness of a betrayal. And yet, ironically, it would be Jagger who delivered these raw lyrics with startling conviction when the time came to record them.
The emotional rift behind the song
The sadness at the heart of Had It with You isn’t romantic melancholy so much as the anguish of watching a creative partnership slowly unravel. Keith felt Mick drifting away, chasing solo ambitions that seemed, to him, like a rejection of the Rolling Stones’ unity. Whether Mick interpreted the song as an accusation is still a mystery, but his performance hints at something complicated—an unease, perhaps even a reluctant acknowledgment of the tension coursing through the band. His harmonica playing, sharp and expressive, became one of the track’s defining elements. It’s a bitter irony: the man whom the lyrics implicitly confront is also the one anchoring them musically, elevating the track with a delivery that suggests he understood the sting behind the words more than he ever admitted.
Back to basics—by force, not choice
Musically, the track’s stripped-down nature reflects the band’s inner turmoil. Keith, Ron, and Mick Jagger wrote only four songs together for Dirty Work, and Had It with You was the last of them—an unusual creative triangle never repeated with any other member. Ronnie Wood’s role was particularly distinctive: instead of contributing solely on guitar, he added a saxophone part, even though its phrasing never reached the swaggering confidence of Bobby Keys. Still, Keith was determined to pare the track down to its bones. The band’s environment at the time was so volatile that returning to basics was not just a stylistic choice but a survival tactic.
Thus, the track was recorded with no bass and no keyboards—something Keith later defended by saying the song simply worked better without them. Whether this was entirely true or an emotional reaction to the band’s fractures is up for debate, because the absence of bass leaves a noticeable gap. The guitars were also minimized, with Keith locking into a gritty, rootsy rhythm tone likely built from his blond 1959 Telecaster running through a Fender Twin. Only one overdub, played simultaneously with Ronnie, was acceptable to Keith’s ears. Charlie Watts, ever the band’s anchor, delivered a solid drum performance that managed to escape the turmoil around him. At the end of the track the clicking of the control-room intercom switch betrays how raw and minimally handled the recording truly was—a snapshot of the Stones in a state of controlled collapse.
Ronnie Wood’s saxophone detour
Though his sax part on Had It with You may not be considered essential, Ron Wood wasn’t new to the instrument. In 1985—the same year the track was recorded—he showcased his sax skills in a star-studded concert organized by Bill Wyman. The event was part of Willie and the Poor Boys, a charity project created to raise money for research into multiple sclerosis, in honor of Ronnie Lane. Wood’s presence on sax in that performance underscores how his musical versatility was bubbling to the surface during this era. Even if his contribution to the Stones track wasn’t a standout moment, it reflected a willingness to push into unexpected territories while navigating the band’s increasingly complicated internal dynamics.
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