How 'Tattoo You' Became a Glorious Pile of Outtakes (and the Strange Journey of 'Waiting on a Friend')

By 1980 the Stones were running low on gas. Jagger and Richards had scraps from sessions spanning eight years, so they just dumped the best leftovers onto one album. ‘Tattoo You’ pulls from seven separate recording blocks: 1972’s ‘Goats Head Soup’ sessions, 1974’s ‘It’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll’, 1975’s ‘Black and Blue’, and then the later ‘Some Girls’ and ‘Emotional Rescue’ eras. The result feels cohesive only because the band rarely strayed from their core sound, but really it’s a Frankenstein of a record.

‘Waiting on a Friend’ has the weirdest passport. The basic track was cut in late 1972 or early 1973 during the ‘Goats Head Soup’ sessions at Dynamic Sound Studios in Kingston, Jamaica. Mick Taylor played guitar on it — his fluid, bluesy lines are all over the original tape. But the song sat untouched for nearly a decade. In 1980, after Taylor had left the band, Jagger and Richards overdubbed new vocals and a sax solo from Sonny Rollins. The final version keeps Taylor’s playing, but he wasn’t in the room when the song finally got finished. It’s a ghost collaboration across time.