Composers:
Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Recording date:
August 2004-June 2005
Recording locations: La
Fourchette, Posé sur Cisse, France & Los Angeles, USA
Producers: Don
Was & The Glimmer Twins Chief
engineer: Krish
Sharma
Mixer: Krish
Sharma Performed
onstage: 2005-06

Line-up:
Drums: Charlie
Watts
Acoustic guitar:
Keith Richards
Electric guitars:
Keith Richards, Mick Jagger & Ron Wood
Keyboards: Mick
Jagger & Matt Clifford
Lead vocals: Mick
Jagger
Backing vocals: Mick
Jagger & Keith Richards
Vibes: Mick Jagger
& Matt Clifford
Programming: Matt
Clifford
It was a filthy block of flats
Trash was on the floor
A stink was in my nose
Hinges off the doors
She took me in her room
All was spick and span
Fixed me up a drink
Turned down all the lamps
And the rain fell down
On the cold hard ground (grey town)
And the phone kept ringing
And we made sweet love
Why do we live in this strange grey town?
They build it up and let it all fall down
Feel like we're living in a battleground
Everybody's jazzed
Why do we live in this strange grey town?
The paint is peeling and the sky's turned
brown
The bankers are wankers, every Thursday night
They just vomit on the ground
Everybody's dreaming
Everybody's scheming, yeah
Oh, watching the rain fall down
She cooked me up some eggs
Then she made some tea
Kissed me on the cheek
And I turned on her TV
It was all the usual crap
All the usual sleaze
For ten thousand quid
Some bimbo spilled the beans, yeah
Yeah
And the rain fell down
And we made, and we made, and we made sweet
love
And the phone kept, the phone kept ringing
Yeah
Yeah
And the phone kept ringing
The phone kept ringing, yeah
And the rain...
TrackTalk
(T)here are other songs, more concentrated stuff like Rain Fall Down and Laugh, I Nearly Died, that are more created sounds of the studio.
I laid down drum loops on the demos and certain
grooves, and I ended up working with Charlie and working up those specific
grooves, like on Rain Fall Down. In the old days when you did demos,
you couldn't really carry them over into recording. But now I just took
certain elements, and I've kept elements, so it saves you time. And also
you can get a cetain kind of feel sometimes when you inititially do it,
too.
...London's gotten even scarier. Rain Fall
Down is a song about London. It has a line, Feel like we're living
in a battleground / Everyone's jazzed. That was in my head already.
There weer so many armed police in the streets. Walking around, seeing
machine guns, is not how you imagine London to be. If we keep going down
this track, we're not going to get back.
(I)t's very tongue-in-cheek. But yeah it's
saying, We all live here, why do we think it's so great? I wasn't
thinking about the girl selling my story exactly, more the tawdriness of
it all. I was thinking of someone like Jude Law and the nanny. He's like
the new Hugh Grant.
I like eggs at the right moment. It's really
nice at the right moment. Not the wrong moment. In the morning. (After
sex, y)eah, but in the morning!