Zen And The Art Of “Sway”
by Freddie Katz, July 29, 2020
There are occasionally times in our lives when series of events may happen concurrently that can jettison our entire sense of reality; we instinctively know that from this day forward nothing will ever be the same. Sometimes it’s personal; perhaps a partner of many years suddenly has a traumatic experience leading to a change of heart, decides to leave. The same week a parent or sibling passes on unexpectedly. You feel as if all at once your world is crumbling. Sometimes it’s a toxic brew of business and personal bad luck; the company you work for goes bankrupt and lays you off. Later you get home to discover that your building is being sold and all of a sudden you need to find a new apartment. Or, sometimes it might be world events, things out of our control altogether, the things insurance policies refer to as “acts of god”; you’re in a band that’s been struggling for years, but things are finally looking up. A label has signed you, the album is about to come out, and the national tour is booked, but all of a sudden there’s a global pandemic. Everything is indefinitely put on hold, the bass player decides to go back to school to become an epidemiologist, and the singer succumbs to the virus. Band over. Record release stalled. Tour kaput. Now what?!? It’s a lot to process, a lot to accept.
Bad news piled on top of bad news….concurrent catastrophic events.
These are the times that The Rolling Stones’ song “Sway” was written for.
The story of “Sway” is a rather curious one in the Stones canon. Although one of the greatest Stones songs of all (some would say the greatest), Keith Richards in fact had very little to do with the song. Even though “Sway” is credited to the usual Stones songwriting team of Jagger/Richards, Keith wasn’t present for the writing or recording of it, and for years Mick Taylor has stated (and I believe him) that the song was written by he and Mick Jagger, the latter providing lyrics and playing rhythm guitar. “Sway” is in fact the first time that Jagger played guitar on a Stones recording. Eventually Keith added some backing vocals to the track (reportedly along with Pete Townshend, Billy Nichols and Ronnie Lane), but that was his sole contribution. This probably accounts for the reason that “Sway” was never performed live at the time of its release. In fact, the first time the Stones played it in concert was in 2006, probably because over the years its stature had grown; even though it was never a “hit”, it became a favorite of hardcore Stones fans. It also became a song of particular influence to bands influenced by The Stones. Just ask The Black Crowes where “Sister Luck” came from; “Sister Sway” perhaps? Despite Keith’s name being synonymous with The Rolling Stones (his first solo album “Talk Is Cheap” was hailed as the best “Stones” album of the eighties!), “Sway”, which barely features him at all, stands out as one of their greatest and most influential tracks. Taylor finally played it live with The Stones when he appeared as a guest in 2013, for their fiftieth anniversary tour.
So, what’s the song about? Oh, nothing too heavy…birth, life, death, love, loss, sex, sin, spiritual upheaval, redemption…just little things like that.
“Did you ever wake up to find
A day that broke up your mind
Destroyed your notion of circular time”…
But it’s not only the catastrophic events that are important; it’s how we deal with them. How strong is our character? How easily will we be able to pick ourselves up and move on, and what kind of help will we seek to do it? Will it be spiritual? Will it be chemical? Will it cause that “demon life” to get us “in its sway”?
How do we cope with profound loss?
“Ain’t flinging tears out on the dusty ground
For all my friends out on the burial ground
Can’t stand the feeling getting so brought down”
Will our reactions cause “that evil life” to get us “in its sway”? Or will we somehow be able to find happiness through the spiritual. Or, perhaps through something as simple as realizing that we can find love and joy in life again, if we’re open to it.
Because with all of its reference to pain and loss, “Sway” also offers us redemption…it really is a song for all eventualities.
“There must be ways to find out
Love is the way they say is really strutting out”
And with that, out struts Mick Taylor’s sublime guitar solo. Taylor is a master, the only true virtuoso to ever play with The Stones, and his slide guitar with its crying, lilting lyricism, forces all of that pain right out of you, until finally you feel as the Buddha felt, “I am awake”.
“One day I woke up to find
Right in the bed next to mine
Someone that broke me up with a corner of her smile, yeah”
“Beneath it’s darkness “Sway” is also a song of hope, and in the end, just as in The Master And Margarita (Bulgakov’s novel of Satan’s trip to Moscow, which also figures into The Stones’ legend…but that’s a story for another day…) “that demon life” has changed it’s trajectory; it’s become your path to salvation, that “corner of her smile”.
“Sway”…it’s about how I feel these days…most of the time.
God Bless Mick Taylor.
Namaste ૐ
The original Rolling Stones’ version, from “Sticky Fingers”:
And for those who might be interested in your writer’s interpretation, here’s the version I recorded with Patti Rothberg, my loving tribute to the great Mick Taylor:
