I love all of the tracks that Keith sings for the Stones — they tend to sound like gloriously messy first takes, and while some of them were 1st takes, here's the story of a track that was not.
I'm deep into Keith Richard's rollercoaster memoir 'Life' and the story of 'Before they make me run' is a classic and has to be shared.
Recording for the album 'Some Girls' began in 78'. Richards was still in the throws of addiction but somehow still a creative force. He wrote 'Before they make me run' as a response the Toronto arrest of 77' with its trial still hanging in the balance.
Keith had some time without Mick in the studio, so started recording the song, and stayed in the studio until it was finished — 5 whole days later:
For sheer longevity—for long distance—there is no track that I know of like “Before They Make Me Run.” That song, which I sang on that record, was a cry from the heart. But it burned up the personnel like no other. I was in the studio, without leaving, for five days. -Keith Richards, 'Life'
Not surprisingly nobody could match that type of endurance and you have to feel for the poor engineers who caught Keith in the middle of drug-fuelled creative frenzy:
Five days without a wink of sleep. I had an engineer called Dave Jordan and I had another engineer, and one of them would flop under the desk and have a few hours’ kip and I’d put the other one in and keep going. We all had black eyes by the time it was finished. I don’t know what was so difficult about it; it just wasn’t quite right. But then you get guys that’ll hang with you. You’ll be standing there with a guitar round your neck and everybody else is conked out on the floor. Oh no, not another take, Keith, please. People brought in food, pain au chocolat. Days turned into nights. But you just can’t leave it. It’s almost there, you’re tasting it, it’s just not in your mouth. It’s like fried bacon and onion, but you haven’t eaten it yet, it just smells good. By the fourth day, Dave looked like he’d been punched in both eyes. And he had to be taken away. “We got it, Dave,” and somebody got him a taxi. He disappeared, and when we were finally finished, I fell asleep under the booth, under all the machinery. -Keith Richards, 'Life'
The fact that Dave 'had to be taken away' as if from a bloody battlefield, seems to sum up the session for me. I mean, 5 days without sleep, c'mon....people have died with that type of deprivation...but oh no, there's Keith, still working away in the midst of unconscious bodies.
The story of the session continued after the song was finished, with the French police recording a brass band with Keith asleep under the desk with all his drugs and needles. An unbelievable final twist to an unbelievable tale:
I woke up eventually, how many hours I never counted, and there’s the Paris police band. A bloody brass band. That’s what woke me up. They’re listening to a playback. And they don’t know I’m under there, and I’m looking at all these trousers with red stripes and “La Marseillaise” going on, and I’m wondering, when should I emerge? And I’m dying for a pee, and I’ve got my shit with me, needles and stuff, and I’m surrounded by cops that don’t know I’m there. So I waited a bit and thought, I’ll just be very English, and I sort of rolled out and said, “Oh, my God! I’m terribly sorry,” and before they knew it, I was out, and they were all zut alors–ing and there were about seventy-six of them. I thought, they’re just like us! They’re so intent on making a good record they didn’t bust me. -Keith Richards, 'Life'
And the finished product, which takes on a new life with the backstory. Here it is "Before they make me run" — Keith at his best:
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