The Meaning Behind “Beast Of Burden” by The Rolling Stones, a Secret Code and a Creative Comeback

By 1978, the future wasn’t exactly clear for the world’s greatest rock band. When The Rolling Stones began work on Some Girls, Keith Richards was in the throes of drug addiction. Meanwhile, Mick Jagger was doing his best to keep the band going with one half of the Glimmer Twins facing serious legal trouble.

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However, with Some Girls, both The Rolling Stones and Richards were back. It was the band’s strongest album in years, with Jagger and Richards navigating punk and disco in the late 70s. “Beast Of Burden”, the album’s second single, has become a Stones’ staple, but Richards says most have misinterpreted the song.

About “Beast Of Burden”

“Those who say it’s about one woman in particular, they’ve got it all wrong,” Richards told Harper’s Bazaar in 2017. The guitarist wrote the music and its hook before handing it off to Jagger to finish. “Here’s the idea, here’s the song,” he said, “now run away and fill it in!”

I’ll never be your beast of burden
My back is broad, but it’s a-hurting.

Some have interpreted the hook to be Richards’s apology to Jagger for having to shoulder the band while the guitarist struggled with addiction. Yet, the lyrics reveal a more immediate … need.

All I want: for you to make love to me.

Revealing or not, Richards said the meaning is unknowable. “I find it quite amusing that there are people in the world who spend a lot of their time trying to decode something that is, at the end of the day, completely undecodable. I mean, even I’ve forgotten the code!”

Though it’s not clear who Jagger is speaking to, one doesn’t need a code for the following verse. Perhaps Jagger was burdened by a little more than Richards’s looming trial for drug possession.

I’ll never be your beast of burden
So let’s go home and draw the curtains
Music on the radio
Come on, baby, make sweet love to me.

Ronnie Wood and a Creative Comeback

Some Girls is the first Rolling Stones album to feature Ronnie Wood as a full-time guitarist. Wood had already contributed to It’s Only Rock ’N Roll and Black And Blue. The latter album, while the band searched for a guitarist to replace Mick Taylor, who quit in 1974.

With Wood, The Rolling Stones once again had a stable lineup, a return-to-form album, and, with Richards avoiding a long-term prison sentence, a future. Burden relieved.

Photo by Richard E. Aaron/Redferns