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Rolling Stones unreleased: Leather Jacket

Leather Jacket is one of those Rolling Stones recordings that feels less like a song and more like a question mark. Cut during the band’s creative hot streak in 1970, it’s an unfinished instrumental built around Mick Taylor’s looping, hypnotic guitar figure, with no vocals and no clear ending in sight. Instead of resolution, it offers atmosphere: a moment caught mid-thought at Olympic Sound Studios. Never officially released by the Stones, the track lingered in the vaults until Taylor reshaped it years later for his solo debut. What remains is a tantalizing fragment—proof that even the Stones’ loose ends can be strangely compelling.

Written by: Mick Taylor
Recorded: Olympic Sound Studios, London, June 16-July 27 1970
Guest musicians: Nicky Hopkins (piano)

From Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012:
An instrumental track. Vocals may have been intended at a later date. The track consists solely of a repetitive melody supplied by Mick Taylor and is obviously unfinished. It was re-worked and released (without the Stones) on his debut album Mick Taylor in 1979.

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The Unfinished Tale of Leather Jacket

Among the many curiosities in The Rolling Stones’ vaults, Leather Jacket stands out as a fascinating fragment of what might have been. Recorded at London’s Olympic Sound Studios between June 16 and July 27, 1970, this instrumental piece emerged during one of the band’s most creatively fertile periods. Written by Mick Taylor, the track features his distinctive guitar work weaving a repetitive, hypnotic melody. With Nicky Hopkins adding rich piano textures, the piece hints at a fuller vision that, for reasons unknown, never came to completion. No vocals were recorded—though it’s widely believed they were planned for a later session.

As it exists, Leather Jacket feels like a snapshot of an idea in motion, frozen before it could reach its final form. There’s a certain charm in that incompleteness, a raw quality that invites speculation about the song’s potential place in the Stones’ catalogue had it been finished.

From Stones’ Vault to Mick Taylor’s Debut

While the track never saw an official Rolling Stones release, Leather Jacket refused to fade into obscurity. Mick Taylor revisited and reworked the composition for his self-titled debut album 9 years later, in 1979, this time without the rest of the band. In that incarnation, the song finally found a home, though in a form shaped entirely by Taylor’s own musical sensibilities. The original Stones recording remains unreleased, a ghostly relic of a moment when the band’s future seemed boundless and experimentation was the order of the day. For diehard fans, it’s a reminder of how much great music exists behind closed studio doors—unfinished, unheard, but still part of the group’s story. Leather Jacket may never have been polished into a fully-fledged Rolling Stones track, but its lingering presence in the band’s lore gives it a special, almost mythical allure.

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