Line-up:

Drums: Charlie Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Acoustic guitars: Keith Richards & Ron Wood
Electric guitars: Keith Richards & Ron Wood (incl. solo)
Lead vocal: Mick Jagger
Background vocals: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
 

I'll never be your beast of burden
My back is broad but it's a-hurting
All I want is for you to make love to me

I'll never be your beast of burden
I've walked for miles, my feet are hurting
All I want is (for) you to make love to me (yeah)

Am I hard enough?
Am I rough enough?
Am I rich enough?
I'm not too blind to see

I'll never be your beast of burden
So let's go home and draw the curtains
Music on the radio, come on, baby, make sweet love with me, yeah

Oh little sister

Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty girls

You're a pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty girl
Pretty, pretty, such a pretty, pretty, pretty girl
Come on, baby, please, please, please

I'll tell you

You can put me out on the street
Put me out with no shoes on my feet
But put me out, put me out, put me out of misery, hey

All your sickness, I can suck it up
Throw it all at me, I can shrug it off
There's one thing, baby, I don't understand
You keep on telling me I ain't your kind of man

Ain't I rough enough?
Ain't I tough enough?
Ain't I rich enough, in love enough? Ooh please

I'll never be your beast of burden
Never, never, never, never, never be

I don't need no beast of burden
I need no fussing, I need no nursing
Never,  never, never, never, never need
 
 

TrackTalk

That's more like Keith's song. I wrote lyrics.

It just cropped up in the studio. It started kind of faster and funkier and more shouted and became - when everybody else started playing, we decided to cut it "relax" and it came down to what it is in just one take. That was it.

This was another one where Mick just filled in the verses. With the Stones, you take along a song, play it and see if there are any takers. Sometimes they ignore it, sometimes they grab it and record it. After all the faster numbers on Some Girls, everybody settled down and enjoyed the slow one.

How it works on a tune like Beast of Burden is Keith would set up a chord sequence and maybe one or two lines, and then you've got to extemporize on that, and come up with these melody lines and lyrics. We just ran the chord sequence through a lot of times - we were open-ended in the studio, so we just tried lots of different ways of doing the beats and arrangements. The actual chord sequences are the same, but the stuff in there that makes the sections different is the different vocal lines. I would just scat the thing and come up with pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty girl and all the little talk sequences - I hesitate to use the word rap - and after all this the song is different melodically from the actual original.

Beast of Burden is a combination (of a real girl and a fantasy).

Ah, I see, I'm not integrating (the nice and bad women in my songs) properly. Maybe not. Maybe Beast of Burden is integrated slightly: I don't want a beast of burden, I don't want the kind of woman who's going to drudge for me. The song says: I don't need a beast of burden, and I'm not going to be your beast of burden, either. Any woman can see that that's like my saying that I don't want a woman to be on her knees for me. I mean, I get accused of being very anitigirl, right? But people really don't listen, they get it all wrong: they hear Beast of Burden and say Argggh!

(On the pretty pretty part), I wasn't thinking of Buddy Holly at all; it's a completely unconscious thing.

Lyrically this wasn't particulary heartfelt in a personal way. It's a soul begging song, an attitude song. It was one of those where you get one melodic lick, break it down and work it up, there are two parts here which are basically the same.

When I returned to the fold after closing down the laboratory, I came back into the studio with Mick... to say, Thanks, man, for shouldering the burden - that's why I wrote Beast of Burden for him, I realise in retrospect - and the weird thing was that he didn't want to share the burden any more.

I quite like it, but I didn't expect anyone to really go for it, certainly not as much as you. It's surprising.

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