Dead Flowers

Composers: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Recording date: December 1969 & April 1970
Recording location: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England
Producer: Jimmy Miller        Chief engineers: Glyn Johns & Andy Johns
Performed onstage: 1970-71, 1973, 1976, 1989-90, 1994-95, 1997-99, 2002-03, 2005-07, 2012-16, 2018

Probable line-up:

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

Well when you're sitting there in your silk upholstered chair
Talking to some rich folk that you know
Well I hope you won't see me in my ragged company
For you know I could never be alone

Take me down, little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the queen of the underground

And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave

Well when you're sitting back in your rose pink Cadillac
Making bets on Kentucky Derby Day
I'll be in my basement room with a needle and a spoon
And another girl to take my pain away

Take me down, little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the queen of the underground

And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the mail
Send me dead flowers to my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave

Hey

Take me down, little Susie, take me down
I know you think you're the queen of the underground

And you can send me dead flowers every morning
Send me dead flowers by the U.S. mail
Say it with dead flowers at my wedding
And I won't forget to put roses on your grave
No, I won't forget to put roses on your grave
 
 

TrackTalk

Dead Flowers was all written before (we recorded it). I'd played it a hundred times at home.

- Mick Jagger, 1971


It's a sort of joke. Yeah, it's probably a down lyric but it's done in an upbeat way; a vulnerable song done in an invulnerable way (laughs). It's a pretty straight country tune. I wrote it very quickly.... Mick Taylor, he sounds like a real old country player, with all these pulls and things. I like doing it really fast. The rest of the band always complain it's too fast, but that's the way I like doing it.

- Mick Jagger, 2015


I used a brown Gibson ES-345 for Dead Flowers ...

- Mick Taylor, 1979


I love country music, but I find it very hard to take it seriously. I also think a lot of country music is sung with the tongue in cheek, so I do it tongue in cheek. The harmonic thing is very different from the blues. It doesn't bend notes in the same way, so I suppose it's very English, really. Even though it's been very Americanized, it feels very close to me, to my roots, so to speak.

- Mick Jagger, 1995


The "country" songs we recorded later, like Dead Flowers on Sticky Fingers or Far Away Eyes on Some Girls, are slightly different (than our earlier ones). The actual music is played completely straight, but it's me who's not going legit with the whole thing, because I think I'm a blues singer not a country singer - I think it's more suited to Keith's voice than mine.

- Mick Jagger, 2003


I think some girl sent me a bunch of dead flowers, so I thought that was a good line.

- Mick Jagger, 2015

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