Rock and a Hard Place

Composers: Mick Jagger & Keith Richards
Recording date: March-June 1989
Recording locations: Air Studios, Montserrat, Virgin Islands & Olympic Studios, London, England
Producers: Chris Kimsey & The Glimmer Twins        Chief engineer: Christopher Marc Potter
Performed onstage: 1989-90, 1995, 1997, 2002


Line-up:

Drums: Charlie Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Electric guitars: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards & Ron Wood (incl. solo)
Lead vocals: Mick Jagger
Background vocals: Bernard Fowler, Lisa Fischer & Sarah Dash
Keyboards: Matt Clifford & Chuck Leavell
Brass: The Kick Horns
 

The fields of Eden are full of trash
And if we beg and we borrow and steal, we'll never get it back
People are hungry, they crowd around
And the city gets bigger as the country comes begging to town

We're stuck between a rock and a hard place
Between a rock, yeah, and a hard place - mm

This talk of freedom and human rights
Means bullying and private wars and chucking all the dust into our eyes
And peasant people poorer than dirt
Who are caught in the crossfire and have nothing to lose but their shirts - yeah

We're stuck between a rock and a hard place
Between a rock and a hard place
You'd better stop - you'd better stop -, put on a kind face
Between a rock, yeah, and a hard place

We're in the same boat on the same sea
And we're sailing south on the same breeze
Building dream churches with silver spires
And our rogue children are playing loaded dice

Between a rock and a hard place
You'd better stop

Yeah, give it (...)

Give me the truth now, don't want no sham
I'd be hung, drawn and quartered for a sheep just as a well as a lamb

We're stuck between a rock and a hard place
A rock and a hard place
You'd better stop, put on a kind face

Oh yeah, can't you see what you're doing to me?

Between a rock and a hard place - that's what I said
Between a rock and a hard place - yeah
You better stop - yeah, you better stop -, put on a kind face - (...) now

Yeah, I can't believe it now
Yeah, come on now
Yeah

 Between a rock and a hard place
Between a rock - yeah - and a hard place
You better stop, put on a kind face
You better stop, put on a kind face
Between a rock - yeah - and a hard place
Between a rock - yeah - and a hard place


 

TrackTalk

This is one of those songs like Start Me Up, where the minute you hear the opening notes, you head for the dance floor. It's real '70s, in the best possible way.

- Mick Jagger, 1989


It's totally Mick's song.

- Keith Richards, 2002


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