[purchase]
The “Moonlight Mile” will likely conjure up different
memories for each of us, for me it harks back to my first years living on my
own. Granted, I purchased my first Stones LPs several years earlier: on a
family trip to Greece (where albums were more available for purchase, I had
scored Between the Buttons and Aftermath – must have been about ’69). I have
been a Stones aficionado ever since. The two words [Moonlight Mile] evoke a
night-time mood (in this case, a bit ethereal) and distance (would that I could
run a mile in the 5.55 minutes it takes to play this song!)
So what is a Moonlight Mile? Here, we’ve got a piece from
1971’s Sticky Fingers. There’s acoustic guitar that builds into a slightly heavier
electric atmosphere, but in this case, with lots of other orchestration: extensive
use of strings, and a dreamy style that evokes later works like Goats Head Soup
(Angie?) and at the same time presages in style what is coming next in Exile on
Main Street. We’ve got Mick Taylor (before he quit! the Stones) doing some
really nice slide guitar work. The piano playing in the back is amazing. Serendipitously,
Bill Janovitz (a recent post of mine) comments on this beautiful piano work by
Jim Price
among the other positive critique he offers at Allmusic.com . Apparently Mick
Jagger plays a lot of the acoustic guitar here.
(In this post we continue to push the limits to see if my hosting service is using file names or embedded file info or text in the blog to ID files for deletion!!)