The Rolling Stones Song Recorded Just Before Everything Almost Fell Apart: “That’s Jail to Me”

The Rolling Stones weren’t afraid to be rough around the edges. Between them and The Beatles, The Stones were far more likely to be actual ne’er-do-wells—and their music followed suit. There were multiple points throughout The Stones’ career that nearly spelled disaster for the group, many of which involved Keith Richards.

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There was one incident involving Richards, Mick Jagger, and their art dealer, Robert Fraser, that nearly cost the band their freedom—and, moreover, their careers. Just before everything almost fell apart, the band recorded a song. To this day, Richards connects this song to an impending jail sentence he barely scraped out of.

[RELATED: How Marianne Faithfull’s Favorite Bob Dylan Song Almost Reflects Her Tumultuous Relationship With The Rolling Stones]

The Rolling Stones Song Recorded Just Before Everything Almost Fell Apart

A few months before recording a song titled “We Love You,” Richards, Jagger, and Fraser were raided by the police, who unsurprisingly found enough evidence to charge them with drug offenses. Their potential jail time loomed over them while they recorded this psychedelic track.

The Stones weren’t the most psychedelic of their peers. Though they leaned into that style several times, they always kept a little more of their blues-rock roots than many rockers throughout the 60s. “We Love You” was one of the exceptions. The lyrics are somewhat nonsensical—like any good psychedelic song should be.

Moreover, this song fits the time in which it was recorded. The band was suffering the consequences of living on the fringes of society. “Your uniforms don’t fit we / We forget the place we’re in,” they sing in the bridge of this track.

It was an apt send-off for a group that thought they would be behind bars very soon.

“We Love You”

Though the band didn’t end up serving any jail time, Richards still connects this song to the time when the band members thought they might have to pause their career.

“That’s jail to me,” Richards once said. “We were on bail. We thought we were going to go to jail, basically. It was kind of like a last fling before the jail doors started slamming. We thought, ‘Well, you know, we won’t be doing this for a while.’ That was a really low point because we figured they’d really nailed us. And that was kinda going to be our last tune for a while.”

“At that time, it was like, ‘Let’s get as much in the can as possible before the door clangs,’” he added. “You know, ‘We Love You, Goodbye’ was the original title, I think [laughs].”

(Photo by Robert Knight Archive/Redferns)