Line-up:

Drums: Charlie Watts
Bass: Darryl Jones
Acoustic guitars: Keith Richards
Electric guitars: Keith Richards & Ron Wood
Lead vocals: Mick Jagger
Background vocals: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards & Bernard Fowler
 

You'd better grease up, I'm coming back
You're going to catch fire, pyromaniac
You'd better shape up, you'd better get set
Going to burn up in the smoke of a jet

Sparks will fly when I finally get myself
Back on you, baby

Ooh, you're going to find out
Hey, I'm going to scream and shout
We're piercing this drought
Sparks will fly, yeah

Sparks will fly

I'm going to stand back, the flames are high
Better get help, can't stop the fire
Bell's going to ring, hear the alarms
Better tell the fire chief to quit playing cards

Ooh, I want to step on the gas
I want to get there real fast
I want to fuck your sweet ass

Sparks will fly
Sharks will cry

Had a good sniff around
All my old hunting grounds
But I have never found
A woman so hot

My fingers are crossed
Hey, the time that we lost
Hey, I'm in total chaos
And sparks will fly

Hey yeah
Sparks will fly
Yeah, come on
Back on you, baby
Sparks will fly
Come on...
Hey yeah
 
 

TrackTalk

Hybrids, ones (that Mick and I wrote) together (include): Love Is Strong, Got Me Rocking, and Sparks Will Fly... Sparks Will Fly was actually eyeball-to-eyeball with Charlie Watts more than anybody to start with, because we would not let anybody else play on it until we'd honed down that rhythm track thing dead right. You know, it was like, three's a crowd (laughs) for a minute, until we'd worked it out. And then we let everybody else in.

We had a big bonfire going one night out in Ronnie's garden. I was throwing all these logs on it, and these sparks started flying, and suddenly I started running back to the studio, I've got one! Incoming! Charlie was the only guy there, and he and I played the thing. Nobody else was allowed to play it for months, until we'd got it right. It all has to do with the rhythm and the guitar, and after that the rest of it fell into place. Charlie's laying down the law on that one. You've got to know a guy so well to play that tight together. It's unspoken, because it's all going by in front of you in 3 seconds.

Keith Richards is the easiest person in the world to play with and so we just played like we normally play. I just started off and he comes in, or he'll start off and I come in. And we'd do three goes at it, look at each other and he'll say, Try it tomorrow. Keith usually calls the shots because he's writing the thing. And he knows if it's right or wrong. We didn't do many takes of that.

(A)ll I had here, exactly, was the hook (sings because sparks will fly) and the way it was taking off. Mick's bit was the other bit where we hit the verse - boom. It dovetailed straight in, and we had that.

I don't remember (alluding to anal sex). (Laughs) It just spilled out. Honest... Actually, even Keith raised an eyebrow. He was going around afterwards going, Did he really say that? Did he?

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