(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sat 18 October 2025 10:25, UK
If you were a part of a band in the 1960s, then big shifts were happening right in front of your eyes. For a while, it was not only perfectly acceptable but completely expected that the band who got up on stage would not perform their own songs. Instead, they would perform classics or even new rock standards. But then, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones arrived, and everything changed.
Those two bands, inspired by artist from the folk movement, would not only perform classic tracks but write their own too. The seas would change, and the expectation changed with it. Now, it was largely unthinkable that a band would arrive to the stage without at least some of their own songs to sing. The Beatles’ Lennon-McCartney partnership may have been pioneers, but the Stones and their own duo quickly followed suit.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards would quickly mark themselves out to be an almost as impressive songwriting partnership. Nicknamed the ‘Glimmer Twins’, the two men operated as a dual pincer action to create rock ‘n’ roll that, squeezing out jams to pierce the radio airwaves and deliver something truly special.
While Jagger and Richards remain one of the most influential songwriting partnerships of all time, there were moments when The Rolling Stones duo would write without each other. One of the most prominent examples of this break in the creative partnership came in the early 1980s when the pair were experiencing a disparity in fortunes.
The song in question is ‘Neighbours’, taken from the 1981 album Tattoo You. Jagger wrote the material after a series of run-ins Richards had with his neighbours over him playing music too loudly in his Manhattan apartment. Eventually, the guitarist would be evicted from the property after the complaints piled up against him.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in 1978. (Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
This spat inspired Jagger to write the single as an inversion of the actual situation, which humorously delves into the subject of noisy neighbours not allowing the main character to live in peace. At one point, Jagger sings in reference to his friend’s experience: “Neighbours / Have I got neighbours? / Ringing my doorbells / All day and all night”.
When speaking to Rolling Stone in 1981, Richards shed light on his circumstances, claiming that he and his girlfriend, Patti Hansen were, in fact, “homeless”. Discussing the origins of the track and claiming that Jagger’s relationship with his neighbours was different, he said: “Patti and I are homeless at the moment. Mick wrote the lyrics to that (‘Neighbours’) — and he never has trouble with neighbours.”
The Rolling Stones axeman then outlined how exactly Jagger’s living situation differed greatly from his own because the vocalist was “smart” in choosing where to live, not because he was quiet. He said that Jagger would choose old buildings with “very thick walls” with nobody around, whereas he had a “knack” for selecting locations where there would always be an “uncool couple” who took issue with him playing his music.
Richards said: “Jagger got himself into a good old building with very thick walls and nobody particular around. I have a knack for finding a whole building of very cool people, you know, but there’ll be one uncool couple — they’re always a couple. And my apartment will always be either just above them or next door to them or just below. And they’re the kind of people who’ll knock you up at six in the morning, while you’ve just sort of got a little bit of music going.”
Richards acknowledged that he couldn’t “blast” his music but suggested that the couple were demanding beyond reason. He continued: “By now, I’m aware that I can’t blast the sounds. So I’m trying to be cool about it. And these people come up to our door saying, ‘We can’t even hear Bugs Bunny on our TV, your music’s so loud! Turn the kettledrums down!’ So, I mean, I’m plagued by that kind of thing.”
It wasn’t all doom and gloom, though, and despite being “homeless”, Richards expressed adoration for Jagger’s song and even asserted that it’s the one “I wish I’d written”. He said: “I swear they’re the same couple everywhere I go. They just follow me around: ‘Let’s bug him; he’s an asshole, he deserves it.’ ‘Neighbours’ is the first song I think Mick’s ever really written for me. It’s one I wish I’d written, that.”
Asked whether their friendship was as solid as it seemed, the guitarist added: “Yeah. It’s a true friendship when you can bash somebody over the head and not be told, ‘You’re not my friend anymore.’ That’s a true friendship. You put up with each other’s bitching. People will think we’re having these huge arguments and say, ‘Oh, will they split up?’ But it’s our way of working, you know? He’s my wife. And he’ll say the same thing about me: ‘Yeah, he’s my wife.’”
Watch the video for ‘Neighbours’ below.
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