{"id":481089,"date":"2026-02-21T02:57:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-21T02:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/481089\/"},"modified":"2026-02-21T02:57:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T02:57:08","slug":"the-montauk-motel-that-inspired-a-rolling-stones-ballad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/481089\/","title":{"rendered":"The Montauk motel that inspired a Rolling Stones ballad"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mick<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Fri 20 February 2026 23:00, UK <\/p>\n

American locale and culture live and breathe within The Rolling Stones<\/a>\u2019 over 60-year-old songbook.<\/p>\n

Founded on a fervent love of the old blues masters in 1962, a spiritual affinity with the States always drew The Stones to its musical gravitas, clumsily navigating the psychedelic era with diminishing results before finding their true element in the roots revivalism that marked the decade\u2019s end.<\/p>\n

Before long, The Stones were scoring the US tumult with as much authenticity as any of the country\u2019s homegrown peers. \u2018Street Fighting Man\u2019 captured the civil strife and protest engulfing the nation, \u2018Honky Tonk Women\u2019 soaked up the \u201cgin-soaked, bar-room\u201ds of Memphis with authority, and their own Altamont tragedy amid the surrounding death of the hippy idyll afforded its doom harbinger soundtrack on the apocalyptic \u2018Gimme Shelter\u2019. For many fans across the Atlantic, The Stones are their own as much as Jimi Hendrix or The Doors.<\/p>\n

An eye on America\u2019s landscape never left frontman Mick Jagger<\/a>\u2019s lyrical eye. By the mid-1970s, The Stones\u2019 golden era had ebbed somewhat, stumbling into a wobble of self-parody around the time of It\u2019s Only Rock \u2018n Roll and Black and Blue. Yet, inspired cuts were still able to be conjured, a ballad from the latter LP finding a soulful slice of evocative rumination wrought from the smattering of motels across the East Coast.<\/p>\n

The longest number on Black and Blue at over seven minutes, \u2018Memory Motel\u2019 sees Jagger immersed in an almost apparitional embrace of one \u201cHannah honey\u201d implied he\u2019d shared a one-night stand with in the titular roadside lodge. Materialising like a faded memory, Jagger\u2019s ode to an old flame illustrates the \u201cif these walls could talk\u201d idiom, the lowly motel room a witness to humanity\u2019s most private moments.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a curious cut in The Stones\u2019 canon. Recorded at Germany\u2019s Musicland Studios, Keith Richards shares \u2018Memory Motel\u2019s lead vocal but he doesn\u2019t lend his usual guitar chops; the sudden departure of Mick Taylor forced the band to rope in Canned Heat\u2019s Harvey Mandel to lay down the electric guitar part as a semi-audition before Ronnie Wood\u2019s permanent recruitment.<\/p>\n

It turns out, Jagger\u2019s phantasmic romance was inspired by a real motel. Written during the Tour of the Americas \u201975, the song\u2019s title was indeed lifted from a real site on Long Island\u2019s Montauk, near Andy Warhol\u2019s 20-acre oceanfront Eothen residence he\u2019d been living in for four years. Needing a spot to rehearse, The Stones would hole up with Warhol for tour prep and venture down to the local Memory Motel bar to unwind in the evenings.<\/p>\n

The Memory Motel\u2019s roots date back to the 1920s, reportedly built by a sea captain and named after the tragic loss of his son, who died at sea. Local legend maintains that the motel grew to stand as a brothel and bordello during the Second World War<\/a>, and thus a popular spot for passing sailors stationed in the area, but owing to its only piano and pool table in the Montauk hamlet, drew The Stones years later when needing to pass the evenings.<\/p>\n

Such rock heritage has provided Memory Motel with plenty of tourist interest, they\u2019re more than happy to capitalise on. Now a popular late-night spot with a reputation for closing at 4am and hosting live bands and DJ nights, as recently as 2025, their official Instagram saw the bar adorned with various posters and images of The Stones during their mid-1970s pomp.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Fri 20 February 2026 23:00, UK American locale and culture live and breathe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481090,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,1731,1733,216,1735],"class_list":{"0":"post-481089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-keith-richards","10":"tag-mick-jagger","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-the-rolling-stones"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481089\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}