How 'Start Me Up' evolved from a 1978 reggae demo to the Tattoo You classic

The most famous riff in Stones history almost stayed in the vault as a reggae outtake. During the Some Girls sessions in 1978, Keith Richards laid down a loose, one-chord jam with a heavy offbeat feel that the band called “Never Stop.” It was essentially a reggae groove—Jagger even sang a few sketchy lines in a lazy island cadence—but they couldn’t find a chorus or a real shape for it, so they abandoned the track.

Three years later, the Stones were scrambling for material to finish Tattoo You. The album was mostly filler culled from leftover sessions, and producer Chris Kimsey pulled up the old “Never Stop” tape. They sped up the tempo, switched to a straight rock beat, and suddenly the riff snapped into focus. Jagger then wrote the lyrics in a few takes, pulling from scattered notebook lines about a woman who “makes a dead man come” and a man who “never stop, never stop.” The words were finalized almost as an afterthought—Jagger admitted he basically filled in the syllables to match the rhythm, and the “start me up” hook came from a phrase Richards kept yelling during the original jam.

The demo origins explain why the song feels both loose and locked: the reggae pulse is still buried in the guitar parts, but the final track became a driving rock anthem. It’s