15 years ago today (February 18th), The Rolling Stones played a free show for more than a million people on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Their classic song “Honky Tonk Women” was written in Brazil even though the lyrics feature only Memphis, New York and Paris. Released as a non-album single, it was later included on compilations, beginning with Through the Past Darkly (Big Hits Volume Two) the same year it came out. Keith Richards talks writing it nearly 40 years earlier.
“It started like a real country — a real, like, country put-on hokey thing, And then a couple of months later we’re writing songs and recording and somehow by some metamorphosis it suddenly went into this real swampy, like, black thing, blues thing.”
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