“Mixed Emotions” might not be the song that jumps to mind first when most people think of The Rolling Stones. You could, however, make an argument that the 1989 track stands as one of their most important—at least when you consider where the group was on their career timeline when it was released.
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Why is “Mixed Emotions” such a crucial Stones track? What had transpired between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards to make it so? And why did Richards believe the song turned into a subliminal message to his famous bandmate? To get the answers, you have to go back to a decade that was mostly forgettable for The Rolling Stones. That’s right, we’re headed back to the ‘80s.
The Grimmer Twins
The Rolling Stones have been in business now for over six decades, enduring deaths, arrests, controversies, and many other mishaps that would have stopped most other outfits in their tracks. Even though the relationships between the various band members have always been fractious and volatile, there haven’t been many times when it seemed like the group was in jeopardy of folding. The middle of the ‘80s might have been as close.
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The main issue was that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards weren’t getting along very well at all. As far back as the late ‘70s, what had been an artistic partnership that helped to produce the group’s music on a fairly even split, became somewhat one-sided in favor of Jagger. It happened initially because Richards had to step back to straighten out legal problems. When he returned as a more fully-invested participant again, Jagger wasn’t too keen to yield the reins. To make matters worse, the pair disagreed on the direction the band should take, with Richards preferring the blues-rock with which the Stones had always thrived, and Jagger wanting to see them make more modern music.
Richards got some control back for the 1986 album Dirty Work, but not in the way he wished. Jagger’s 1985 solo album She’s the Boss, which Richards viewed as a betrayal of the band, was dominating his time and forcing him to miss sessions. When Dirty Work was released in 1986, it suffered the worst reviews of the band’s career. It was quite telling that the video for the lead single “One Hit (To the Body)” featured the two men mock fighting. Considering how bad things were between the two, there probably wasn’t a lot of acting involved.
Wheels in E-motion
Jagger and Richards both released solo albums following Dirty Work. On his record, Richards included the song “You Don’t Move Me,” a pretty nasty takedown of Jagger. Yet by the time that song arrived in October 1988, the two men had already sat down and decided that they were going to set a deadline to write an album and get the band back out on tour. The decision to not dive into the issues that had led to the rancor and instead focus on the business at hand was wise.
On a Jamaican getaway, the two men churned out more than enough songs for a new album, which would be called Steel Wheels and released in 1989. One of those songs was “Mixed Emotions.” Richards had partially written it, with Jagger then helping out with the lyrics. The title (which you could hear as “Mick’s Emotions” or “Mick’s Demotion”) and the subject matter seem to comment on the pair’s relationship. Jagger would deny it, but, in an interview from 1989 (sourced from the website timeisonourside.com), Richards admitted he might have unintentionally steered the song in that direction:
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“I thought about (the lyrics’ meaning) afterwards. I was coming back from a session, my old lady, Patti, had just arrived, and I drove over to see her. And I told her how strange it felt, because it suddenly occurred to me that there was infinite room there for subliminal subjection. I realized what we’d laid down there had all the ingredients of an interesting autobiography.”
What Is “Mixed Emotions” About?
No matter the inspiration for the lyrics, “Mixed Emotions,” dressed up in some crunching rock that paved the way to the song reaching a No. 5 chart position in the US, is a clear plea from one party in a damaged relationship to the other for rapprochement and reunion. But there’s also an undercurrent of hurt, most obviously in the chorus (ironically, sung in harmony by Jagger and Richards): You’re not the only one that’s feeling lonesome/You’re not the only with mixed emotions.
The verses, on the other hand, seem to advise against delving into the bad stuff, because that only leads to a dead end: Let’s bury the hatchet, wipe out the past, Jagger sings. In other sections of the song, he makes that same case in more humorous fashion: So get off the fence now, you’re creasing your butt.
In the final lines, Jagger brings it home with a stirring exhortation: Let’s go out dancing, let’s rock and roll, yes. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards might have reunited The Rolling Stones in 1989 without bringing up old wounds. Maybe they didn’t need that, since “Mixed Emotions” found them working out their issues with each other in a therapy session disguised as a song.
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