How Keith Richards Turned a Lullaby Into 'Wild Horses'

The most surprising thing about “Wild Horses” is that it started as a lullaby. Keith Richards wrote the song in 1969 shortly after his son Marlon was born. He was home alone with the baby one afternoon when the opening guitar riff came to him. While Marlon slept, Richards picked up his acoustic guitar and started singing a melody so soft he wouldn’t wake the kid. The lyrics that came out were about not wanting to leave—not a lover, but his newborn son.

The title was not original to Richards, though he made it his own. The phrase “wild horses couldn’t drag me away” is an old English expression. But Richards used it as a promise: even if wild horses tore at him, he wouldn’t leave the person he was singing to. In the original context, that person was his baby. Over time, Mick Jagger—who rewrote some of the verses for the final version—spun the lyrics into a more traditional love song. Still, the emotional core remains that first, fatherly impulse: the ache of separation and the