Being in a band with someone, for better or worse, can often feel like being in a relationship, which would explain why a “particularly nasty” song Keith Richards wrote was long thought to be about his ex-girlfriend when really, it was about his bandmate, Mick Jagger. The band closed their 15th studio album, Emotional Rescue, with the track that very clearly describes a fracturing relationship. “Well, if you call this a life, why must I spend it with you? If the show must go on, let it go on without you.”
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Although Richards would later say his breakup with his children’s mother, Anita Pallenberg, played a small part in the song’s creation, it was mostly about Jagger. A long-time intimate romantic relationship or a long-time intimate creative partnership? As most people who have played in a band will attest, there’s little difference between the two connections.
Keith Richards Wrote This Song as a Form of “Emotional Revenge”
Not every artist would be forthcoming about writing a song solely for the sake of “emotional revenge,” but Keith Richards is not every artist. In a 2013 interview with Sabotage Times, The Rolling Stones admitted he wrote “All About You” as a way to get back at someone close to him. “That’s a particularly nasty song,” he admitted. “It’s like a litany of insults. And it was written so I could get a few things off my chest. The funny thing is that everyone assumes that it was written about Anita [Pallenberg].”
“In fact,” Richards continued, “it’s about Mick. I’d just come off junk and went back to work with The Stones. In my absence, Mick had been running the show. I was ready to pick up where we left off. But in the meantime, Mick had got used to being in charge. So, when I returned to the fold, I was made to feel like an intruder. I got the impression that certain people wished I was back on junk. Well, thank you very much, and f*** you, Jack! So, you see, I had a lot of poison in my system, and I had to get it all out.”
Richards has never been one to mince his words, and he credits his long-lasting friendship with Jagger to their ability to roll with each other’s punches. “It’s a true friendship when you can bash somebody over the head and not be told, ‘You’re not my friend anymore,’” Richards told Rolling Stone in 1981. “That’s a true friendship. You put up with each other’s b****ing. People will think we’re having these huge arguments and say, ‘Oh, will they split up?’ But it’s our way of working. He’s my wife.”
Mick Jagger Wasn’t the Only Source of Inspiration
To be fair to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards wasn’t only thinking about him while writing his scathing track, “All About You”. Speaking to Sabotage Times, Richards admitted that the song was partially about his then-recent ex and band’s muse, Anita Pallenberg, with whom he had three children from 1969 to 1976. “I was breaking up with her around that time,” he explained. “I’d said, ‘Look, if we clean up together, we’ll stay together.’ Well, I cleaned myself up. But she didn’t. And I realized that I couldn’t sleep with someone who had a needle beside the bed. I was too fragile at that point. I had to leave.”
Richards’ take on his failed relationship with Pallenberg wasn’t just a byproduct of hindsight decades later. He expressed similar sentiments in the years shortly following their split, telling Rolling Stone, “She’s fine. I don’t consider myself separated from Anita or anything. She’s still the mother of my kids. Anita is a great, great woman. She’s a fantastic person. I love her. I can’t live with her. You know?”
Considering Richards’ thoughts on Pallenberg, we’re assuming that when he’s singing about being “sick and tired of hanging around with dogs” and “jerks like you”, he was talking about his other partner, Jagger.
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