The Epic Track: “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

Editor’s Note: There are certain tracks that are, well, “epic” — memorable, larger than life, carved into music history. In this series, we look at one of them.

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The year was 1969. The Vietnam War was wreaking havoc, luminaries were getting assassinated, and the “peace and love” vibe of the Hippie movement was beginning to show cracks.

The Stones dropped their classic album Let It Bleed that same year, which concluded with a unique track written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. It addresses the human condition of experiencing deep disappointment and the need to stay in acceptance and hope. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” merges a rock groove with Jagger’s magnetic vocals and the London Bach Children’s Chorus to add a powerful punch of otherworldliness. The result is seven and a half minutes of musical magnificence. Rolling Stone magazine ranked it 100th on their “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list.

The musical components of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” are straightforward, yet filled with eccentric characters and situations. The lyrics have their own mystique, but they all seem to address the pursuit of elusive happiness in a twisted world. And the need to accept what we get from life and do the best we can with it.

“I saw her today at the reception

A glass of wine in her hand

I knew she was gonna meet her connection

At her feet was a footloose man…”

We know nothing more about the mystery woman and her sidekick, but it conjures a vague image of some swanky event with a backdrop of drugs. In the next stanza, the narrator goes to an unspecified protest “to get my fair share of abuse.” It then flows into the chorus:

You can’t always get what you want…

But if you try sometimes, you just might find

You get what you need!

Next, narrator Mick gets a prescription filled at the iconic Chelsea Drugstore on King’s Road in London (a venue that’s now a McDonald’s) and encounters his buddy “Mr. Jimmy,” with whom he has an existential exchange over a Cherry Coke. The mysterious Mr. Jimmy was supposedly Jimmy Hutmaker, an idiosyncratic gent from Minnesota. The details are far less important than the aura the song serves up.

The final stanza refers back to the mystery woman, who has somehow eliminated her footloose companion, her “blood-stained hands” giving her crime away. There’s a theory that Mick wrote this after his brief affair with Anita Pallenberg ended and she had returned to Keith. The narrator sees that he’s been painfully misled, but there’s redemption in knowing he’ll be more perceptive in the future (#NoMoreLoveTriangles).

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is bracketed by the London Bach chorus, 60 angelic voices double-tracked in the studio to achieve maximum fullness. Back-up singers Madeline Bell, Nanette Newman, and Doris Troy flesh it out further.

The external pandemonium is echoed by the chaos within the band at the time: Charlie Watts was somehow unable to tackle the drum technique, so producer Jimmy Miller filled in. Brian Jones was too deep in his addictions to play on the track; producer and studio musician Al Kooper took over, playing keyboards and the melancholic French Horn riff at the top.

“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” has remained a classic, a bluesy anthem that delivers the message that we often don’t get what we want in life…but we’ll somehow manage. It was relevant in 1969 and remains so today.

The dark lyrics and situations contrast beautifully with the lush orchestration and growing sense of spirit as the choir builds up and fades out. The track was used to dramatic effect in the 1983 movie The Big Chill and over the closing credits of the first 2004 episode of the medical drama, House.

Jagger himself is a fan of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”: “It’s a good song, even if I say so myself. It’s got a very sing-along chorus, and people can identify with it: No one gets what they always want. It’s got a very good melody. It’s got very good orchestral touches…it’s got all the ingredients.”

-Ellen Fagan

Photo: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards (Getty Images)