Yet “Sway” remains what the deejays call a “deep track,” perhaps because, Kent alleges, Jagger and Richards “generally refused to give him a songwriter credit when he contributed to their tunes,” never mind songs that were Taylor’s through and through. That tune speaks to the excess that was swirling around the band and the world, of friends on the burial ground and the perils of the “demon life.” Jagger sang it as if a man possessed, and as for Taylor, well, his playing, always fluent and melodic, was seldom better fitted to its subject. He acquitted himself very well indeed, playing lead on what for my money is the Stones’ most memorable ballad, “Moonlight Mile,” as well as a tune that should have been a generational anthem but was never given much airplay, least of all by the Stones themselves-namely, Taylor’s grim rocker “Sway.” For the moment, the bleary group frequently convened at Mick Jagger’s Berkshire estate, where its innovative mobile studio was put to good service capturing the songs that would make up its first album of the decade, Sticky Fingers.Īs British music journalist Nick Kent recounts in his forthcoming memoir Apathy for the Devil, Keith Richards was the baddest of those bad boys, so much so that recent Stones recruit Mick Taylor was left to lay down many guitar tracks without him. It would not be long before the storied quintet would depart for southern France, exiles from the prevailing British tax system at the advice of their accountants. The summer of 1970, a distant 40 years ago, found The Rolling Stones in what just might be the baddest phase of all their bad-boy glory, a time that would have ended the tenure of lesser souls on this planet.