Claudine: The Rolling Stones' Unreleased Song About a Socialite Scandal

During the It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll sessions in 1974, the Stones cut a track called “Claudine” that never made the album. Mick Jagger wrote it about Claudine Longet, a French singer and socialite who was the ex-wife of Andy Williams. The song directly referenced a real-life tragedy: in 1976 (after the sessions, but the scandal was already brewing), Longet shot and killed her boyfriend, Olympic skier Vladimir “Spider” Sabich. She claimed it was an accident; the case became a tabloid circus.

The Stones scrapped the song because it was just too hot to handle. Even for a band that loved courting controversy, releasing a track that essentially sang about a woman potentially involved in a manslaughter case felt like a step too far. Jagger reportedly worried about legal blowback and bad taste. “Claudine” eventually leaked decades later on bootlegs—a rare glimpse of the Stones trying on a true-crime narrative they wisely left in the vault.