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Rolling Stones songs: Plundered My Soul
I hate quittin’ but I’m close to admittin’ I’m a sorry case/ But on quiet reflection, my sad rejections not a total disgrace…
Written by: Jagger/Richard Recorded: Rolling Stones Mobile, Villa Nellcote, Villefranche-sur-mer, France, July and Oct. 14-Nov. 23 1971; New vocals and guitar by Mick, new guitar by Mick Taylor in New York City and Los Angeles, 2009 *Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012
Mick Jagger: vocals, acoustic guitar, tambourine Keith Richards: rhythm guitar Mick Taylor: lead guitar Bill Wyman: bass Charlie Watts: drums Guest musicians: Nicky Hopkins (piano), Bobby Keys (sax), Lisa Fischer and Cindy Mizelle (background vocals)
The Rolling Stones have always had a way of letting the past breathe again, but few moments feel as evocative as the return of Plundered My Soul. Unearthed decades after it was first recorded, the track reconnects listeners with a raw, unfinished chapter of the band’s most mythic era.
Originally born during the 1971 sessions for Exile on Main St., the song resurfaced in 2010 as part of the album’s deluxe reissue. What makes it fascinating isn’t just its sound, but the collision of eras—classic Stones grit meeting a modern sense of reflection and hindsight.
Released to mark Record Store Day, Plundered My Soul feels less like a bonus track and more like a message sent through time. It reminds us that even after all these years, the Stones still know how to surprise, haunt, and hit straight to the heart.
More about Plundered My Soul by The Rolling Stones
*By Marcelo Sonaglioni
A treasure unearthed from Nellcôte
In 2010, when Universal unveiled the expanded reissue of Exile on Main St., the story wasn’t just about remastering a classic—it was about resurrection. Deep inside a warehouse stacked with decades of tapes, producer Don Was and The Rolling Stones stumbled upon a forgotten backing track from the legendary Nellcôte sessions of 1971. Recorded in the basement of the villa during that torrid summer in the South of France, the tape held rhythm guitars, bass, drums, and piano—but no finished song. What emerged from that dusty archive would become Plundered My Soul, a lost fragment of the Exile era finally given shape. To complete it, new lyrics and fresh performances were added, bridging nearly forty years of history in a single recording. The result was not simply a bonus track, but a conversation between 1971 and 2010.
The first spark of the reissue
Before listeners could fully explore the expanded Exile on Main St., Plundered My Soul stepped forward as its herald. It became the first song released from the new recordings, issued as a limited-edition single on April 17, 2010, in celebration of Record Store Day. Copies were placed in independent stores, reinforcing the album’s roots in vinyl culture and analog devotion. The single featured All Down the Line as the B-side and marked the band’s first proper single since 2005’s Biggest Mistake.
Rebuilding a 1971 foundation
The bones of the track were pure Exile. Keith Richards on rhythm guitar, Bill Wyman on bass, Charlie Watts on drums, and Nicky Hopkins on piano created that unmistakable early seventies atmosphere. When Mick Jagger revisited the recording, he began shaping the unfinished piece into a complete narrative. He also called upon Mick Taylor, who stepped into the studio to add lead guitar in three or four passes. As Taylor later explained, the original tape had no vocal and no lead guitar—only the core band performance.
Yet the production posed challenges. Don Was had to reconcile the timbre of Jagger’s 1971 voice with his 2010 vocals. Time had matured the singer’s tone; there was no miracle solution. The same temporal shift applied to Taylor’s lead work. Even with the careful mixing by Bob Clearmountain, the contrast between eras remained perceptible. Jagger’s vocal, somewhat buried in the mix in keeping with period style, felt slightly recessed. Additional touches—Bobby Keys on saxophone, an acoustic guitar likely added by Jagger, and backing vocals from Lisa Fischer and Cindy Mizelle—enriched the texture, yet some listeners wondered whether something ineffable from 1971 had been left behind.
Mick Jagger (2010): “I’ve put Mick Taylor on Plundered My Soul because he wasn’t on it. I wasn’t on it, he wasn’t on it, so obviously we were driving to the studio when that was done (laughs)… It was very nice, it was just like the old days, you know, I just sat Mick down and we did it like half an hour…”
Mick Taylor (2012): “It’s not typical of Exile on Main Street – it’s just that it was recorded during that period. It’s got backup vocals and things on it that were done a couple of years ago. The original track is just sort of Keith’s rhythm guitar, Bill Wyman’s bass playing and Charlie Watts’ drumming, and it’s very raw”
A story of wounded pride
LyricallyPlundered My Soul unfolds as a confession steeped in resentment. The narrator admits to being a bad loser, not because he was robbed of wealth, but because love cut deeper. “I thought you wanted my money, but you plundered my soul,” Jagger sings, turning heartbreak into something bruised yet defiant. It is classic Stones territory: romance framed through swagger, vulnerability delivered with a sly edge.
The emotional core feels authentic to the Exile spirit—messy, human, slightly bitter—but the hindsight of 2010 gives it an added layer. It’s not just a tale of a failed relationship; it’s a performance shaped by decades of experience. The wound described may belong to the early seventies, yet the voice recounting it carries the weight of time.
Echoes across decades
From the opening distorted chords of Keith Richards to the steady pulse of Charlie Watts and the rolling piano lines of Nicky Hopkins, the track immediately conjures the humid air of Nellcôte. The groove is thick, lived-in, unmistakably tied to Exile on Main St.. But as Mick Taylor enters with his lyrical lead guitar and Jagger’s matured voice settles into the mix, the illusion shifts. The listener becomes aware of standing between two rooms: one in 1971, one in 2010.
That duality defines Plundered My Soul. It may lack the raw immediacy of a song fully completed in the basement of Nellcôte, yet it gains something else—a reflective dimension, an acknowledgment that art can be paused and resumed across decades. Rather than a flawless time capsule, it is a bridge. And perhaps that tension, that audible dialogue between past and present, is precisely what makes the track compelling.
Mick Jagger (2010): “The Exile outtakes weren’t all recorded in the same place. Some of them I really remembered, but some of them I didn’t remember at all. Some of them were really together. Plundered My Soul, that was perfect, you didn’t have to edit, it was all perfect. Some of the others were much more loose jams.”
Keith Richards: “I hadn’t really realized how much was left over until I started going into this project. I automatically assumed that anything good [and unused] that we’d done on Exile would roll over to Goats Head Soup.”
Mick Taylor: “That was very quick. I mean, because the track was already there for me to overdub on, and Mick had already done a rough vocal, so it didn’t actually sound too much like an outtake from Exile on Main St. Well, it did, except Mick had added vocals and back-up vocals and all it needed was some lead guitar, which I did… very quickly. I think it took about two hours for me to do about four or five different passes on the guitar.”
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