Composers: Mick
Jagger & Keith Richards
Recording date:
March, October & December 1975
Recording locations: Musicland
Studios, Munich, West Germany
& Mountain Recording Studios,
Montreux, Switzerland
Producers: The
Glimmer Twins Chief
engineer:
Keith
Harwood
Performed onstage: 1976-77,
2002-03
Line-up:
Drums: Charlie
Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Electric guitars: Keith
Richards & Wayne Perkins (incl.
solos)
Lead vocal: Mick
Jagger
Background vocals: Keith
Richards & Ron Wood
Piano: Billy
Preston
Percussion: Ollie
Brown
TrackTalk
(Keith and I) write some together. In fact, Hand of Fate we kind of did, get together. Even on the lyrics, we discussed it over a lengthy coffee... coffee BREAKS, in the studio, and we came up with the lyrics TOGETHER on that one.
(I)t's the wrong rhythm these days. It's a
bit old-fashioned Rolling Stones... Well, you've got your fucking opportunity
(if you prefer dancing to this one). If you don't like to dance to THIS
one (Hot Stuff), you don't have to touch it, soon enough THIS one
comes on. And you're back into your old Rolling Stones booga-boom, gadda-gadda,
boom-boom. All right?
Hand of Fate
seemed to be a good song to have second (on the album)... It's a
narrative, you know, a sort of chopped up narrative about a Southern
murder. It's better, you know, than singing about the ordinary things.
A lot of people like that one. It's about someone whose woman you take
and he decides to take her back. It's a simple narrative... It's quite
a good idea to do if you've got the kernel of a good story. It's very
hard, actually – unless you're really good – to get any kind of
narrative into a song of four and a half minutes. It's so
complicated: And then he... If it got as complicated as it could have been, it would really have got boring. And the thing is to not say a lot.