The Rolling Stones – Can’t You Hear Me Knocking (Live 2013)

26th September 2021 · 2010s, 2013, Music

This Stones performance had passed me by completely, perhaps because I had long ago mentally dismissed the past half a century of their work.

Wrongly so, judging by this extraordinary footage of the band at Glastonbury in 2013, notable chiefly for two things.

One is the fantastic sax solo by longtime Stones sideman Bobby Keys, who started out at the age of 15 playing sax with his fellow Lubbock legend Buddy Holly and who died a year after this.

The second is the amazing guitar solo by Mick Taylor, the band’s best ever lead guitarist, returning in front of one of the biggest crowds of his career..

He plays almost entirely by intuition, and you can see the admiration in the faces of Keith and Ron, flanking him as he coaxes melodic bluesy sounds from his guitar.

Apparently the original song, which appeared on Sticky Fingers, was also an improvised jam – with Richards on lead guitar – recorded accidentally after the band thought the tape had stopped.

When they heard the result, they decided to keep it, adding four-and-a-half minutes to the original running time.