News The longest song by The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones have perfected the art of creating radio-friendly songs. The iconic British group understands how to craft tracks that don’t overstay their welcome, leaving fans wanting more. Nevertheless, they have occasionally indulged their self-expressive side.
Although The Stones aren’t known for making pocket-sized punk anthems, they usually keep themselves restrained enough and save their jams for live performances. In the band’s early days, it was unheard of for acts to make particularly long songs, largely because it was viewed as a waste of album space, with vinyl tending to only hold 22 minutes of sound on each side.
Therefore, due to working with those restrictions, artists in the 1960s often tried to cram as many songs as possible into 44 minutes to avoid having to release a double album. With The Rolling Stones’ fourth album, Aftermath, they boldly decided to buck contemporary trends and overstep the ten-minute mark on one track.
Before Bob Dylan decided to rip up the rulebook in 1965 with ‘Desolation Row’, it was unheard of for acts to make tracks of such length. The Rolling Stones then proved it was possible to do in the rock ‘n’ roll realm with the pioneering ‘Goin’ Home’, which appeared on their aforementioned album, released in 1966.
While The Stones have continued to make long songs that subvert the traditional framework of the genre, nothing they’ve released over the last 55 years has eclipsed the length of ‘Goin’ Home’. Other notably extensive tracks in their back catalogue include fan favourites such as ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’, ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ and ‘Miss You’.
Despite the elongated running time of ‘Goin’ Home’, the recording process wasn’t a protracted exercise. Instead, it was a happy accident which resulted in a masterpiece, and The Rolling Stones were unwilling to compromise by reducing its length once they’d heard the final cut.
Guitarist Keith Richards later told Rolling Stone of the song’s creation: “It was the first long rock and roll cut. It broke that two-minute barrier. We tried to make singles as long as we could do then because we just liked to let things roll on. Dylan was used to building a song for 20 minutes because of the folk thing he came from. That was another thing.”
Richards continued: “No one sat down to make an 11-minute track. I mean ‘Goin’ Home’, the song was written just the first 2 and a half minutes. We just happened to keep the tape rolling, me on guitar, Brian [Jones] on harp, Bill [Wyman, on bass] and Charlie [Watts, on drums] and Mick. If there’s a piano, it’s Stew [Ian Stewart].”
Understandably, due to having a running time boasting over 11 minutes, ‘Goin’ Home’ wasn’t elected as a single from Aftermath. Furthermore, likely for the same reason, it is a rarity in their live sets, having only been performed live by The Rolling Stones on 15 occasions, all in 1967.
