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Rolling Stones songs: Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren)
Got to be alive and kicking/ Glad to be alive and kicking…
Written by: Jagger/Richard Recorded: Rolling Stones Mobile, Nellcote, France, Jun.-Nov. 1971; Sunset Sound Studios, Los Angeles, USA, Dec. 1971-March 1972; RCA Studios, Los Angeles, USA, March 1972 *Mixing, editing and overdubbing of original leftovers done in New Yorki, Los Angeles and London studios, 2009 *Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012
Mick Jagger: vocals, guitar, harmonica, maracas Keith Richards: guitar Mick Taylor: guitar Bill Wyman: bass Charlie Watts: drums Guest musicians: Nicky Hopkins (piano), Bobby Keys (sax), Jim Price (trumpet), Jimmy Miller (percussion), Lisa Fisher and Cindy Mizelle (backing vocals)
Some Rolling Stones songs explode with swagger; others drift in quietly, revealing themselves over time. Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren) belongs to the second group. Unearthed from the Exile on Main St. sessions decades after its creation, the track feels less like a leftover and more like a glimpse into the band’s private world—relaxed, confident, and unconcerned with spectacle.
Recorded during one of the Stones’ most mythologized periods, the song challenges the idea that Exile was all chaos and excess. Instead, it captures the band in a rare moment of restraint, letting groove and feel do the work. There’s no urgency to impress here, only musicians listening to one another and trusting the song to unfold naturally.
Revisiting the Exile tapes in 2010 revealed how much life still lingered beyond the album’s final tracklist. Pass the Wine stands as proof that some Rolling Stones songs weren’t forgotten—they were simply waiting. In doing so, it deepens the Exile on Main St. story, showing that beneath the grime and myth was a band fully aware of its own power.
More about Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren) by The Rolling Stones
*By Marcelo Sonaglioni
Uncorking a forgotten moment
Hidden in the shadows of one of rock’s most mythologized albums, Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren) feels less like an outtake and more like a message sent across decades. Unearthed for the 2010 expansion of Exile on Main St., the song arrives without fanfare, yet quietly reshapes how that era is remembered. It’s relaxed but confident, unpolished but intentional, capturing the Stones in a rare in-between space where nothing needs to prove itself. Rather than exploding with excess, it settles into a groove that suggests long nights, loose rules, and musicians listening closely to one another. This is not the sound of a band chasing perfection, but of one trusting instinct over image. By resurfacing years later, the track doesn’t disrupt the Exile legend—it reframes it, reminding listeners that beneath the chaos and grime lived moments of clarity, humor, and surprising restraint.
The fragile balance of Exile’s sound
The mystique of Exile on Main St. has always rested on its murky atmosphere. It sounds buried on purpose, as if the music had to be excavated rather than recorded. Any attempt to modernize that texture risks tampering with the album’s identity. The 2010 remaster walks a tightrope: improving clarity while preserving disorder. In places, the results feel almost too revealing. Instruments that once blended into a smoky haze now step forward with sharp definition. This enhanced transparency invites admiration for the band’s interplay, but it also chips away at the sense of secrecy that long defined the record. The music is no longer just overheard; it’s presented. That shift doesn’t ruin the album, but it changes the listener’s role—from eavesdropper to observer—altering the emotional distance that made the album feel so illicit in the first place.
Mick Jagger (2010): “Pass the Wine was very, very long, so I edited it down”
From unfinished ideas to second chances
The Stones’ creative process during the Exile On Main St. period was famously restless. Songs were rarely abandoned outright; instead, they lingered, mutating across sessions and albums. This habit left fewer completed leftovers than fans might expect, despite endless hours of recording. Much of what survived existed as fragments: grooves without lyrics, structures waiting for identity. Decades later, the reissue gave those pieces a second life. Rather than presenting them as raw artifacts, the band chose to finish what had once been set aside. It’s an unusual decision, blurring the line between historical document and contemporary creation. These tracks are not time capsules; they are collaborations between past instinct and present intention. While that approach sacrifices some archival purity, it offers something else—a glimpse of how the Stones still recognized themselves in that old material.
A different shade of Mick Jagger
Pass the Wine stands out not because it’s louder or stranger, but because it subtly challenges expectations. Keith Richards later pointed to the track as evidence of a side of Mick Jagger often overshadowed by his frontman persona. Here, Jagger is less the commanding star and more the engaged musician, contributing texture and rhythm rather than spectacle. His harmonica work, in particular, carries a conversational quality, weaving through the arrangement instead of dominating it. This performance reinforces the idea that Jagger’s musicianship has always extended beyond charisma. The song doesn’t announce this revelation; it lets it surface naturally. In doing so, it reframes the dynamic within the band, reminding listeners that the Stones’ power came not only from attitude, but from a shared musical vocabulary built on listening and response.
Confidence without nostalgia
The newly completed songs on the Exile reissue (and expanded) initially feel disorienting. They occupy space once reserved for mystery, replacing imagined possibilities with concrete outcomes. Yet with time, their purpose becomes clearer. These tracks don’t attempt to recreate the exact spirit of Exile; instead, they reflect the band’s enduring confidence. There’s a relaxed authority to them, echoing an era when the Stones operated with absolute self-belief. They may not match the original album’s raw intensity, but they don’t need to. Their value lies in continuity, showing that the band’s identity wasn’t confined to one moment or one sound. Pass the Wine fits neatly into this perspective—not as a lost masterpiece, but as a reminder that even in their messiest period, the Stones left behind more than chaos. They left behind choices, some simply waiting for the right moment to be heard.
Keith Richards (2010): “To hear Nicky Hopkins’ piano on Sophia Loren was a treasure”
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