This hot mess of a sloppy bluesy jam is arguably the last really great Stones single.

I was going to say it’s the last one to feature Mick Taylor – and that’s certainly true of the video – but I don’t think he actually plays a note on this song, even though he’s on the rest of the album, because the title track was recorded almost a year before the rest. 

It does, however, feature his eventual replacement in the Stones, Ronnie Wood, and other members of his band at the time, The Faces. Not that I knew that til now. Nor did I know the backing vocals were by Bowie.

The basic track was recorded in the basement of Wood’s house in Richmond, where Jagger was working with him on his solo album, in July 1973. The jam session that spawned this song featured Wood and drummer Kenney Jones (and possibly keyboard player Ian McLagan), with David Bowie singing the backing vocals. Yep, that’s Bowie on there.

Characteristically, Keith Richards cannot remember whether or not he was there himself, but it seems unlikely because at some point he added his electric guitar parts, telling Wood he had erased his contribution (though you can still hear Ron’s 12-string acoustic guitar).

Nine months after the original jam, session man Willie Weeks added some bass guitar and Ian Stewart played the distinctive piano part, and the song became the title track of their self-produced album It’s Only Rock’n’Roll, reaching no.10 in the singles chart.

“It’s a very Chuck Berry song,” Jagger said later. “But it’s got a different feeling to it than a Chuck Berry song.” It’s also a very Eric Clapton song, being almost exactly the same as a number called Blues Power that Clapton wrote with Leon Russell and had performed just a few months before this jam session, with a special guest joining him onstage at the Rainbow… Ron Wood.

The video, with the band dressed in sailor suits being slowly engulfed by bubbles as they play inside a tent – prefiguring the Ibiza foam parties by a quarter of a century – is directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg.

According to Keith, the fancy dress was his idea – chosen solely because the band did not want to get their own clothes soaked by the bubbles. “And poor old Charlie nearly drowned because we forgot he was sitting down.”