Composers:
Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Recording date: October-December
1977
Recording location: Pathé
Marconi Studios, Paris, France
Producers: The
Glimmer Twins
Chief engineer:
Chris
Kimsey
Performed onstage:
1978-79, 1981-82, 1989-90, 1994-95,
1997-98, 2002-03, 2005-07


Line-up:
Drums: Charlie
Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Electric guitars: Mick
Jagger, Keith Richards & Ron Wood
Lead vocal: Mick
Jagger
Background vocals: Mick
Jagger, Keith Richards & Ron Wood
Piano: Ian
McLagan
Harmonica: Sugar
Blue
Saxophone: Mel
Collins
I've been holding out so long, I've been sleeping
all alone
Lord, I miss you
I've been hanging on the phone, I've been
sleeping all alone
I want to kiss you... sometimes
Ooh... yeah
Well I've been haunted in my sleep, you've
been starring in my dreams
Lord, I miss you, child
I've been waiting in the hall, been waiting
on your call
Yeah, the phone rings, it's just some friends
of mine, they're saying
"Hey, what's the matter, man? We're going to
come around at 12
With some Puerto Rican girls that's just dying
to meet you
We're going to bring a case of wine
Hey, let's go mess and fool around, you know,
like we used to"
I say...
Baby, why you wait so long?
Won't you come home, come home
I've been walking in Central Park, singing
after dark
People think I'm crazy
Stumbling on my feet, shuffling through the
street
Asking people, "What's the matter with you
boy?"
Sometimes I want to sing to myself
Sometimes I sing...
...I miss you, child
I guess I'm lying to myself, it's just you
and no one else
Lord, I want to kiss you, child
You've just been blotting out my mind, fooling
on my time
Lord, I want to kiss you, baby, yeah
Lord, I miss you, child
TrackTalk
The idea for those (bass) lines came from Billy Preston, actually. We'd cut a rough demo a year or so earlier after a recording session. I'd already gone home, and Billy picked up my old bass when they started running through that song. He started doing that bit because it seemed to be the style of his left hand. So when we finally came to do the tune, the boys said, Why don't you work around Billy's idea? So I listened to it once and heard that basic run and took it from there. It took some changing and polishing, but the basic idea was Billy's.
(W)e still work closely on songs. It still
comes together even when we haven't seen each other for months. We help
each other on songs like Miss You which came together during the
1976 tour of Europe. A lot of our songs take a long time to come out.
I got that together with Billy Preston, actually.
Yeah, Billy had shown me the four-on-the-floor bass-drum part, and I would
just play the guitar. I remember playing that in the El Mocambo club when
Keith was on trial in Toronto for whatever he was doing. We were supposed
to be there making this live record... I was still writing it, actually.
We were just in rehearsal.
During the rehearsal of the El Mocambo gig
I wrote the song Miss You. So I remember that 'cause I was waiting
for everyone in the band to turn up and I was with Billy Preston, and Billy
Preston was playing the kick drum and I was always playing the guitar and
I wrote Miss You on that so I remember that moment very well.
We didn't intentionally set out to make a
DIS-CO record. To me, it's just like... that bass drum beat and my falsettos
just fit nicely around the bass part. Vocally, it's more gospel, because
nowadays disco records are much more repetitive... you know, I wanna
dance and shake my booty repeated 89 times!
A lot of those songs like Miss You on
Some
Girls... were heavily influenced by going to the discos. You can hear
it in a lot of those four on the floor rhythms and the Philadelphia-style
drumming. Mick and I used to go to discos a lot... It was a great period.
I remember being in Munich and coming back from a club with Mick singing
one of the Village People songs - YMCA, I think it was - and Keith
went mad, but it sounded great on the dance floor.
(W)e didn't get together and say, Let's
make a disco song. It was a rhythm that was popular and so we made
a song like that.
Miss You is an emotion, it's not really
about A girl. To me, the feeling of longing is what the song is
- I don't like to interpret my own fucking songs - but that's what it is.
(The part about the Puerto Rican girls): it's
true, it's true. I mean that's what happens to you. Anyway, that's an imagined
person. I get much more of a buzz or whatever you want to call it this
year out of writing songs that are not totally within my experience. I
imagine other people's experiences, you must realize that. It's imagination,
observation... You combine the two. In the middle of the song I thought
wouldn't it be funny if you're in New York and you're missing someone and
you get these terrible crass people knocking on your door... I don't know,
it's never happened to me. I don't sit around moping. It's fiction, somgwriting
is fiction...
I still like things like Miss You.
I think that has a directness and feeling.
(T)he amount of thump from Bill and Charlie
is quite amazing.
Sugar Blue played harmonica on Miss You
and
Some
Girls. He was somebody that Mick or Keith found playing on the street.
The thing that blew my mind was what that guy could do, because I play
a little harmonica. I know how to suck and bend, blow and bend like Jimmy
Reed, but if you gave a harmonica to Sugar Blue, he could play in C, C
sharp, C flat, B, A and F, all on the one harmonica. The way he bent it
was unreal.
Although Miss You was a damn good disco
record, it was calculated to be one.
Miss You really caught the moment,
because that was the deal at the time. And that's what made that record
take off.