A good cover sounds like a decent recreation of the original, but a great cover can transform a song into something entirely new, like when Linda Ronstadt covered the Rolling Stones in the late 1970s. In fact, Ronstadt performed the Exile on Main St. track so well that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would reportedly tell their live audiences that Ronstadt “owned” the song.
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Even more amazingly, it all started with some lighthearted ribbing between Jagger and Ronstadt backstage.
Linda Ronstadt Took Ownership Of This Rolling Stones Song
Linda Ronstadt dominated the music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s with her impressive vocal and stylistic range. Whether singing country, Latin, or rock music, Ronstadt made every performance her own, regardless of whether or not she wrote the songs she was singing. Such was the case for a cover of the Rolling Stones’ 1972 track “Tumbling Dice,” the A-side closer to their album Exile on Main St. Ronstadt’s backing band had begun playing the laid-back groove during soundcheck, but because no one knew the actual words, they never incorporated it into the actual show.
That is, of course, until Ronstadt happened upon Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger backstage at one of her shows in the late 1970s. “When Mick walked backstage at my Amphitheatre show, he told me, ‘You do too many ballads in your show. You should do more rock ‘n’ roll.’ I told him I thought he should do more ballads, and we teased each other about it. But I made him write down the words to that song for me so we could do it,” per Far Out Magazine.
Ronstadt put her version of “Tumbling Dice” on her 1977 album, Simple Dreams. The following year, she made a surprise appearance at a Rolling Stones concert in Tucson, Arizona, to perform the song with the band. Personal anecdotes from attendees of that show remember Keith Richards and Jagger saying that although they wrote the song, Linda Ronstadt owned it. Given the musicians’ friendship and respect for one another, it’s not surprising that the British rockers would give her such high praises.
How The Lyrics To “Tumbling Dice” Took Shape
The Rolling Stones’ 1972 track, “Tumbling Dice,” features plenty of Mick Jagger tropes one might expect from an Exile on Main St. track. The song begins with Jagger lamenting, Women think I’m tasty, but they’re always tryin’ to waste me. Baby, baby, don’t need no jewels in my crown. Jagger continues through the rock shuffle with dice references that he picked up from one of his housekeepers, who played dice. “I didn’t know anything about dice playing. She told me these terms,” he explained to The Sun (via Far Out Magazine). “That was the inspiration.”
Ronstadt ended up changing the lyrics slightly in her rendition of the rock track, starting the song with, People try to rape me, always think I’m crazy, make me burn the candle right down. Her version of “Tumbling Dice” was well-received, although certainly not her highest-charting hit, peaking at No. 32 and spending a total of eight weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.
Photo by Ian Dickson/Shutterstock
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