Probable line-up:

Drums: Charlie Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Rhythm electric guitar: Keith Richards
Lead electric guitar: Brian Jones
Lead vocal: Mick Jagger
Background vocals: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Piano: Ian Stewart
Handclaps: ---
 

I live on an apartment on the 99th floor of my block
And I sit at home looking out the window imagining the world has stopped
Then in flies a guy who's all dressed up just like a Union Jack
He says I've won 5 pounds if I have his kind of detergent pack

I said Hey you, get off of my cloud
Hey you, get off of my cloud
Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd
On my cloud, baby

The telephone is ringing, I say, "Hi, it's me, who is it there on the line?"
A voice says, "Hi, hello, how are you?" Well, I guess I'm doing fine
He says, "It's 3 AM, there's too much noise - don't you people ever want to go to bed?
Just 'cause you feel so good, do you have to drive me out of my head?"

Yeah

I was sick and tired, fed up with this and decided to take a drive downtown
It was so very quiet and peaceful, there was nobody, not a soul around
I laid myself out, I was so tired and I started to dream
In the morning the parking tickets were just like a flag stuck on my windscreen
 
 

TrackTalk

The first impression you get of our records is an exciting sound. We've never brought any vocal out much more than on Cloud. It's a case of hunt the words! But you can hear them if you concentrate.

That was the follow-up to Satisfaction. I never dug it as a record. The chorus was a nice idea but we rushed it as the follow-up. We were in L.A. and it was time for another single. But how do you follow Satisfaction? Actually, what I wanted was to do it slow like a Lee Dorsey thing. We rocked it up. I thought it was one of Andrew's worst productions.

(The piano on the record) I think... was just a matter of saying, Stu, this sounds a bit thin... Yeah, that was just one of those things you could do in those days - shadow a guitar with a piano. As long as you didn't make it obvious, it would add some different air to a track.

Get Off My Cloud was not very groovy.

That was Keith's melody and my lyrics... It's a stop-bugging-me, post-teenage-alienation song. The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the '60s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behavior and dress.

(The lyrics are not good), they're crap. It's nothing. Thank you for the compliment but I don't think they are great at all.

It's really difficult now to realize how important it was to have a hit single. If the last one didn't do as well as the one before, that meant you were out, you were sliding out. I mean, it was a state of mind. So each one had to be better and DO better, it didn't just have to be better. I mean, you could make a better record each time but if it didn't DO better as the other one or at least as good, it was a sign that you were declining. You know, it was just real pressure to come up with a red-hot song that says it all in 2 minutes 30 seconds every 8 weeks. I mean, it's got to be ready within 8 weeks and released every 12 or 14 weeks, you know. You've just finished Satisfaction - I'd been wrong about that, it's an enormous hit, and you're going, Wow, lucky me - and you're just taking a breather for a couple of days and Andrew Oldham comes along and says, Where's the next single?

Mick was incredibly prolific then. It was as much as I could do to come up with a riff. Much as I love it now, when I first did it, I thought "Get Off of My Cloud" ain't no "Satisfaction". But it was the best I could do.

Back to December's Children.

Back to Main Page.