Credit: Far Out / Alamy
Sat 17 October 2026 15:30, UK
If there’s one thing you could say about The Rolling Stones, it’s that they love a luxury holiday or two.
And when you’ve made your millions, that’s probably fair enough. Even so, there was no denying that a contrast existed between the image of a quintessentially British 1960s rock band and the one that actually played out: the Stones found themselves in any number of far-flung corners of the world over the years, and used that to their full sonic advantage.
Think about it: Texas, Jamaica, Mexico, and countless other places. You could make a list as long as your arm in terms of significant moments that have happened for the band so far away from home, and yet still, as soon as Mick Jagger opens his gob, you feel like you’re standing on a street corner in London.
All of this is to say that getting away and escaping reality for a while has kind of become an essential part of how the cogs in the Stones’ machine work, and when Jagger and Keith Richards took a Christmas trip to Brazil at the tail end of 1968, that was no different. The perception we have of the country might be of bustling cities or South American flair, but what the pair found subverted their expectations.
It was just like a ranch in Arizona, according to Richards, but that led them down a rather unexpected path in their songwriting inspirations. “Somehow, we got into cowboy songs,” he said, and a whole new disposition took hold of them. Suddenly, it was the land of 1940s country and western, Americana, and open-G tunings.
And, if you hadn’t guessed it already, “I wrote ‘Honky Tonk Women’ then,” Richards recalled, before qualifying, “It was sort of a Hank Williams tune.” They do say that influences often spring from the unlikeliest of places, but Brazil was surely an unlikely birthplace for a slice of classic-sounding country rock.
In the end, the song could have been written anywhere from Brazil to Arizona to someone’s kitchen table, because its far-reaching popularity spoke for itself. At 267million streams later, it still stands as one of The Rolling Stones’ most enduring hits, heard all over the world and all the more beloved for it. But for Jagger and Richards, it sends them straight back to Brazil, every single time.
Further reading: From The Vault
Between the original single and ‘Country Honk’, the country-blues reworking that appeared on the 1969 album Let It Bleed, ‘Honky Tonk Women’ proved one thing, and one thing only. The band might have liked to paint themselves as rock and roll through and through, but in another life, get them on a ranch, and they could have been cowboys.
There’s no question that in their delusions of grandeur, both Jagger and Richards quite fancied themselves as cowboys. Stetson on and boots at the ready, you could tell that was where they always wanted to be. It didn’t matter whether it was Brazil, Arizona, or anywhere else: just play a blast of ‘Honky Tonk Women’, and they’re straight back twanging that guitar.
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