“When The Whip Comes Down” by The Rolling Stones

play music video

“When The Whip Comes Down” by The Rolling Stones

	song info     “When The Whip Comes Down” by The Rolling Stones is a rock song.     Song Title: When The Whip Comes Down     Artist: the Rolling Stones     Album: Some Girls     Genre: rock, classic rock     Composer: Copyright © 1977 Mick Jagger, Keith Richards     Lead Vocals: Mick Jagger     Backing Vocals: Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood     Guitar: Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood, Mick Jagger     Steel Guitar: Ronnie Wood     Bass Guitar: Bill Wyman     Drums: Charlie Watts     Producer: The Glimmer Twins     Recorded: October–December 1977, Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris, France     Released: 9 July 1978     Label: Rolling Stones, Virgin     Number of listens: 6902     Current rank: 2498 (updated weekly)     Highest rank: 2245 (play the video all the way through to register a vote for this song) Translations courtesy of Apple and Google.

    Summary quotation from Wikipedia:

    “When the Whip Comes Down” is a song by rock and roll band The Rolling Stones from their 1978 album Some Girls.

    “When the Whip Comes Down” was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, although Jagger handled the song’s lyrics. Quite unusual, even for the late 1970s, the lyrics deal openly with the perspective of a gay man:

    Yeah, mama and papa told me I was crazy to stay/I was gay in New York, I was a faggot in L.A./So I saved my money and I took the plane/Wherever I go, they just treat me the same.

    In a 1978 interview with Rolling Stone magazine to mark the release of Some Girls, Jagger responded to questions regarding the song’s lyrics: “…There is one song that’s a straight gay song — “When the Whip Comes Down” — but I have no idea why I wrote it. It’s strange — the Rolling Stones have always attracted a lot of men… I don’t know why I wrote it. Maybe I came out of the closet {laughs}. It’s about an imaginary person who comes from L.A. to New York City and becomes a garbage collector… I sure hope the radio stations will play [it].” The lyrics could be taken to imply that the singer becomes a male prostitute,

    Yeah I go to 53rd Street and they spit in my face/But I’m learning the ropes, yeah, I’m learning a trade/The East River truckers is churning with trash/I’ve got so much money but I spend it so fast.
    Yeah, some call me garbage when I’m sweeping up the street/But I never roll and I never cheat/And I’m filling a need, yeah, I’m plugging a hole/My mama’s so glad I ain’t on the dole.

    “When the Whip Comes Down” was recorded at the Pathé Marconi Studios in Paris, France, between the months of October and December 1977. It was another of the famed Some Girls songs to feature just the core members of the Rolling Stones at the time. Jagger performed vocals plus guitar alongside Richards and Ronnie Wood. Wood would also contribute pedal steel guitar to the number, an instrument that also appears on the Some Girls songs “Shattered” and “Far Away Eyes”. Bill Wyman performs bass while Charlie Watts plays the song’s distinctive, driving beat. There are versions of both the base instrumental track and the fully developed backing track with additional lyrics, that run over ten minutes, widely available on bootlegs.

    “When the Whip Comes Down” is seen by some Rolling Stones fans as the closest the Stones came to outright punk music on the album that many call the Stones’ “punk album”. It is also one of a few songs on the album to carry a heavy New York City influence. A majority of the Rolling Stones were living in New York at the time.

    A recording from a live show at the Detroit Masonic Temple on 6 July 1978, was released on the 1981 compilation album Sucking in the Seventies, which covered much of their later 1970s material. It also acted as album mate “Respectable”’s b-side. A live recording from their 2002-2003 Licks Tour was captured and released on the 2004 live album Live Licks.

    When the Whip Comes Down is also the name of a 16-track Nine Inch Nails bootleg album taken from their performance at the Woodstock ’94 music festival.

—from Wikipedia (the Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License applies to Wikipedia’s block of text and possible accompanying picture, along with any alterations, transformations, and/or building upon Wikipedia’s original text that ThisSideofSanity.com applied to this block of text)

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and U.S. Government Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 require that web sites provide transcripts of audio for the deaf.
We will be adding lyrics to all songs as fast as we can. Please be patient.

most recent comment

    Avery: When The Whip Comes Down is Qiong’s favorite song.

    To submit a comment, use the form below:

    Please use the form (with the delay for a human to inspect it) because this website is attacked by more than 20 spam attempts per minute. The only way to keep you safe from the spam is by having human review.