How 'Tattoo You' Turned Leftovers Into a Classic and 'Start Me Up' Lost Its Reggae Roots

“Tattoo You” is famous for being a scrapbook – half the tracks were pulled from recording sessions stretching back to 1972. But instead of sounding like a messy compilation, it became one of the Stones’ most cohesive albums, largely because the older material (like the soulful “Waiting on a Friend” and the jazz-tinged “Heaven”) was polished up and paired with punchy new recordings. The album’s stylistic shift wasn’t a deliberate new direction; it was a pragmatic use of their own history, and it ended up defining their early-80s sound.

The most striking transformation was “Start Me Up.” The riff had been lying around since 1975, originally tried as a reggae track – you can hear the one-drop drum pattern and laid-back vibe on bootlegs of those sessions. Years later, Mick Jagger sped it up and pushed the band into a straight-ahead rock groove. Keith Richards once said the song “was a reggae that got turned into a rock ’n’ roll song by mistake, but it worked.”

What’s funny is that the reggae version never had a proper chorus. When they finally figured out the “start me up” hook, it became the kind of stadium anthem that made Tattoo You their biggest seller since “Some Girls.” The album proved the Stones could stumble into a masterpiece by recycling their own unfinished ideas.