Like what you see? Help keep it going! This ad-free site runs on the support of readers like you. Your donation helps cover costs and keeps fresh content coming your way every day. Thank you!
Some Rolling Stones songs arrive with a grand statement; others sound like they’ve already lost patience with everyone in the room. Had It With You belongs firmly in the second category. It’s the kind of track that doesn’t politely explain its attitude—it simply walks in, slams the door, and gets on with it. That makes the song particularly interesting in the Stones catalogue, where swagger and irritation have always made surprisingly good bedfellows. Beneath its rough-edged delivery is a fascinating glimpse of the band embracing a deliberately scruffy, confrontational mood. Because apparently, even the Rolling Stones occasionally needed to say: enough already.
You always seem to haunt me/ Always try to haunt me…
Working title: Can’t Cust the Mustard Written by: Jagger/Richards/Wood Recorded: Pathé Marconi Studios, Boulogne-Billancourt, France, Apr. 5-June 17 1985; RPM Studios, New York City, New York, Sept. 10-Oct. 15 1985; Right Track Studios, New York City, New York, Nov. 15-Dec. 5 1985
Mick Jagger: vocals, harmonica Keith Richards: guitar Charlie Watts: drums Ron Wood: rhythm guitar, saxophone
More about Had It With You by The Rolling Stones
*By Marcelo Sonaglioni
A Song With A Target
Had It with You becomes much more intriguing when its lyrics are viewed against the tensions inside The Rolling Stones in 1985. In his book Life Keith Richards recalled writing the song in Ronnie Wood’s front room in Chiswick, on the banks of the Thames, while the band waited to return to Paris. The lyrics, however, appear to carry a more personal frustration. Rather than addressing a woman who has walked away, they may have been directed toward Mick Jagger, whose pursuit of independence from the Stones through She’s the Boss was viewed by Keith as a provocation, perhaps even a betrayal. The irony is obvious: Mick himself sings the words. And he does so convincingly, leaving one fascinating question unanswered: did Mick understand exactly what Keith meant?
Keith Richards (2010): “I wrote Had It with You in Ronnie’s front room in Chiswick, right on the banks of the Thames. We were waiting to go to Paris, but the weather was so dodgy that we were stranded until the Dover ferry started rolling again. Peter Cook and my father were hanging about. There was no heating, and the only way to keep warm was to turn on the amps. I don’t think I’d ever written a song before, apart maybe from All About You, in which I realized I was actually singing about Mick.”
Stripping the Song Down
The production of Had It with You reflects the uneasy atmosphere surrounding the band. It is the fourth and final album track co-written by the Glimmer Twins and Ron Wood, a distinction never given to another member of the Stones.
Ronnie’s role is unusual beyond the songwriting credit, since he also provides little saxophone touches. The part is hardly essential, and its phrasing does not quite enter Bobby Keys territory, but its presence adds another curious detail to an already unconventional recording.
Keith Richards apparently wanted to return to basics. There is no bass and no keyboards, and after several attempts, the musicians decided the track sounded better that way. Whether listeners agree is another matter. The missing bass is certainly noticeable.
Keith’s Roots Sound
With the arrangement stripped back, Keith’s guitar becomes even more important. The main rhythm part has a fantastic roots-oriented tone, most likely achieved with his blond 1959 Telecaster plugged into his new Fender Twin amp.
Rather than surrounding the song with layers of instrumentation, the recording keeps the guitar work close to the bone. Keith allowed only one guitar overdub, recorded simultaneously with Ronnie Wood, to remain in the finished track. The result is rougher and more direct than a heavily constructed studio production.
Charlie Watts supplies the drums, giving the track its rhythmic foundation without crowding the sparse arrangement. The simplicity seems deliberate: fewer instruments mean more room for the attitude behind the song to come through.
Mick’s Uncomfortable Role
Mick Jagger’s performance is one of the song’s great contradictions. He delivers the lyrics extremely well, yet their possible meaning makes his participation rather fascinating. If Keith was indeed expressing his frustration with Mick’s solo ambitions, then Mick was effectively singing words that could be interpreted as being aimed at him.
Mick’s harmonica playing, meanwhile, may be his most impressive contribution to the track. His phrases fit naturally into the rough arrangement and give the recording additional character.
There is even a tiny studio detail after the song hits the 3-minute mark where the switch on the control-room intercom can be heard clicking on at the end of the track. It is an almost throwaway sound, but it fits a recording that feels unusually close to the room in which it was made.
Keith Richards (1985): “Yeah, the basic track was cut with Charlie on drums, me on guitar and Mick on vocal and harp. We tried it with the full band and we realized we were just sounding like the Rolling Stones doing the Rolling Stones’ favorite sort of ‘Ye Olde Famous Rolling Stones Sound’. But then, when we took the bass and the piano and the extra guitars off, it just sat right on the button. It came off sounding like a live radio broadcast that way. And at a slightly later date Ronnie and I did one overdub at the same time. But, I mean, there’s nothing in the rule book that says you’ve got to have a bass on there. And then there’s that middle breakdown part that almost trips over itself (laughs). Cutting a good blues track is not easy: it’s all been done a million times, and to add something new to it is not so much a matter of thought as feel.”
Ronnie Wood and the Saxophone
Ronnie Wood’s saxophone contribution has an interesting connection beyond Had It with You. In 1985, he also played the instrument live as part of a prestigious lineup for Willie and the Poor Boys, a video produced by Bill Wyman to raise funds for the fight against multiple sclerosis on behalf of his friend Ronnie Lane. But not in the album!
The saxophone on the song not be indispensable, but it gives the song another unexpected twist. Combined with the absence of bass and keyboards, Keith’s stripped-down guitar, Charlie Watts’ drums, and Mick’s harmonica, it creates an unusually bare-bones Stones recording.
That sparseness may have been precisely what Keith wanted. At a moment when tensions over independence and musical direction were reportedly running high, the Stones reduced the machinery and let the song speak with considerably less decoration. Whether Had It with You was really a message to Mick Jagger is impossible to prove. But with Mick singing it, the ambiguity makes the track considerably more interesting.
Ronnie Wood (1988): “Had It with You was… just a couple of takes. I went in the control room and said, I’m not playing on this one, you lot get in there – the original band – and it was great. Mick did that live harp, and I just put a little sax in the background, like a rhythm sax.”
Like what you see? Help keep it going! This site runs on the support of readers like you. Your donation helps cover costs and keeps fresh Rolling Stones content coming your way every day. Thank you!
Stones Data on Substack
