(Credits: Far Out / Marcel Antonisse / Anefo)
Sun 14 December 2025 15:30, UK
Now that the frost has well and truly nipped the air, it gets us to thinking about all our favourite colder-edged tunes. As it turns out, The Rolling Stones were imagining that even in the most polar opposite of climates.
With the seismic acclaim of Exile on Main St to follow up on, the early 1970s could have proved to be a total creative drought for the band as they felt pressured to somehow mine gold. But if there was ever trepidation, bravado and rock and roll hedonism soon took over with the production of their 1973 album Goats Head Soup.
But the first track of the album, ‘Winter’, was somewhat of an exception for the typically tight-knit group. As much as he criminally took the credit, Keith Richards did not actually have anything to do with the song’s creation or process; he’s the only member of the band who doesn’t appear on the track at all. But nevertheless, in his eyes, there was always something about it that glimmered with the band’s essential formula.
The slight irony in all of this is that ‘Winter’ was recorded amid the searing, baking heat of Jamaica, where the Stones based themselves in those days as tax exiles from their native UK. As much as the landscape in itself no doubt provided a muse, in this instance it was the antithesis to where Mick Jagger’s mind managed to wander.
“And it sure been a cold, cold winter/ And the wind ain’t been blowin’ from the south/ It’s sure been a cold, cold winter/ And a lotta love is all burned out,” he sings in the opening lines, reminiscing on a good old English snowstorm but equally the pain and loneliness that can often come with that. The striking image was one that Richards branded as “a Mick beauty”.
But Jagger was only really part of the equation – the other Mick on the team was just as instrumental to powering that song with the edge of heartbreak and yearning it possessed by the bucketload. Although it was one of his swan songs with the band, Mick Taylor’s swooning, blistering solo added something to the track that only he was able to create.
“I always liked the way Mick picked out those pretty melodies around the tunes,” Jagger chimed in. “He was very good at that sort of thing.” In a way, then, ‘Winter’ represented the beauty of the two Micks – one who was the wordsmith, and one who delivered the melodies. He may have loved the song, but it did make Richards look like a bit of a spare part.
But clearly, those Jamaican skies and that seminal time in his life had a massive effect on Richards as a person. “That was ’73, the year Marley and the Wailers put out Catch a Fire. That’s also the year the soundtrack of The Harder They Come came out. I remember being in Jamaica, there was a feeling in the air. Jamaica was starting to make a mark on the map. After the sessions, I just moved back and I stayed there for months. It became my second home, you know.”
And as such, although ‘Winter’ was palpated with his absence, it slowly became a song that meant a lot to Richards for the symbolism it represented in his life at the time. It was the opportunity to literally sit back, relax, and enjoy the view – and maybe for the first time, realise and appreciate just how massive the talents of his bandmates really were.
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