Rolling Stones songs: Live with Me
*Click for MORE ROLLING STONES SONGS 1962-PRESENT

Whoa, the servants they’re so helpful, dear/ The cook she is a whore…

Written by: Jagger/Richard
Recorded: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England, May 12-24 1969; Sunset Sound Studios, Los Angeles, USA, Nov. 2-3 1969
Guest musicians: Nicky Hopkins (piano), Leon Russell (piano), Bobby Keys (tenor sax)
*Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012

From Songfacts:
Along with “Country Honk,” this was one of two songs new guitarist Mick Taylor played on Let It Bleed. He and Keith Richards produced a distinctive twin lead guitar sound.

This marked the first appearance of Bobby Keys, who played sax on this and many other Stones songs. He had toured in the past with Buddy Holly and Bobby Vee, and went on the road with The Stones from 1969-1974. Keith Richards and Bobby Keys were born on the same day: December 18, 1943.

This song was a harbinger of what was to come for The Stones. The guitar and sax style would appear on their next few albums.
Leon Russell and Nicky Hopkins both played piano on this track. Russell also helped arrange the sax section.

The racy lyrics were a reason the London Bach Choir, who sang on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” asked that they not be associated with the album.

The album cover for Let It Bleed featured a cake, and was designed by a famous UK TV cook named Delia Smith. She said in Bill Wyman’s book Rolling With The Stones: “I was working then as a jobbing home economist with a food photographer who shot for commercials and magazines. I’d cook anything they needed. One day they said they wanted a cake for a Rolling Stones record cover, it was just another job at the time. They wanted it to be very over-the-top and as gaudy as I could make it.”

This was the first song lead guitarist Mick Taylor worked on with the Stones. He said in 2000: “‘Live with Me,’ very appropriately named because once I joined The Stones, it was like living with a family for the next five or six years. It was an interesting session, actually, because they were putting the finishing touches on Let It Bleed and the first track I played on was ‘Live with Me.’ We did that live, and the second thing I did was I overdubbed my guitar part on ‘Honky Tonk Women.'”

Bobby Keys: “Both the horns AND Mick Taylor made their debut on the same album on the same track. At the time a lot of people overlooked the fact that it wasn’t just Mick (Taylor) joining the band, that was the whole period where the horns joined too. And they all left at the same time.”

From the The Rolling Stones – All the Songs book:
Mick Jagger’s caustic humor reasserts itself in “Live with Me.” The high
moral standards inculcated by the best English schools and the various
traditions on which British civilization is founded are swept aside by the
hurricane that is the Rolling Stones. The narrator, whom the singer clearly
delights in embodying, wants his girlfriend to move in with him. However,
he does not hide the fact that he has heaps of what he calls nasty habits: he
takes tea at three, which goes against the proprieties of good British society,
and demands that the meat he eats for dinner be hung up for a week. But
worse is to come. His best friend shoots water rats and feeds them to his
geese. Is it appropriate under these conditions to be envisaging a ménage à
trois? Don’cha think there’s a place for you in between the sheets, asks
Jagger in the refrain. The Dantesque descriptions continue in the second
verse. This time it is a question of harebrained children… locked in the
nursery with earphone heads and dirty necks, who queue up for the
bathroom round about 7:35. As for the staff, they are no more accustomed
to high standards of behavior than the narrator: the cook is a whore, the
butler has a place for her behind the pantry door, and the French maid,
who is wild for Crazy Horse, strips in front of the chauffeur and causes the
footman’s eyes to get crossed.