There aren’t many rock and roll situations that The Rolling Stones haven’t mastered in their long life as a band. But, even they must have been shocked by the debauched situation that surrounded their 1978 song ‘Before They Make Me Run’. Featuring on their record Some Girls, an album that saw the Stones in one of their more excessive periods, the tune was conceived in some of the most hedonistic surroundings.
Originally called ‘Rotten Roll’, the song is drenched in the rock and roll lifestyle that the Stones had perfected over the previous decade or so. One of the main reasons for that could be that the group’s most potent powder-fiend, Keith Richards, was the man in charge of the song, even taking on vocal duties. The indulgent behaviour is exhibited from the very first lines.
“Booze and pills and powders, you can choose your medicine/ Well it’s another goodbye to another good friend,” sings Richards, in a tribute to his friend Gram Parsons, a former member of The Byrds, who sadly passed away in 1973 at the age of 26. These lines are just the start of a track that typifies Richards at this moment: his death-defying dedication to both debauchery and writing rock music.
The reality of Keith Richards is that while he is notably considered one of the kings of rock and roll and the lifestyle that comes with it, he was also a music-making machine, willing to forgo his health in the name of creating hefty doses of guitar-driven rock jams. The perfect example of this duality is ‘Before They Make Me Run’.
Not only are the lyrics drenched in the beading sweat of rock excess, but they were created when Richards was out on bail after being arrested for drug trafficking in Toronto in 1977 after being caught with heroin. The guitarist would eventually work his way out of the charge with the help of a blind fan whom he would later call an “angel” – being sentenced for the lesser charge of possession and getting a probationary sentence – but it allowed Richards to work as an outlaw. Something he undoubtedly relished for those weeks.
However, ‘Before They Make Me Run’ is also special because it was made during a five-day stint where not only did Richards work consistently on the song, but he stayed up for all five nights. “For sheer longevity – for long distance – there is no track that I know of like ‘Before They Make Me Run.’ That song, which I sang on that record, was a cry from the heart. But it burned up the personnel like no other,” shared Richards in his autobiography Life.
“I was in the studio, without leaving, for five days,” he confirmed. “I had an engineer called Dave Jordan and I had another engineer, and one of them would flop under the desk and have a few hours’ kip and I’d put the other one in and keep going. We all had black eyes by the time it was finished… That’s probably the longest I’ve done. There have been others that were close – ‘Can’t Be Seen’ was one – but ‘Before They Make Me Run’ was the marathon.”
Perhaps what is even scarier is that this stint staying awake isn’t even close to Richards’ record — nine days without sleep. However, that run didn’t produce anything close to The Rolling Stones’ song ‘Before They Make Me Run’.
