Angie

Album

Goats Head Soup

Label

Rolling Stones Records

Genre

Soft Rock

Composer(s)

Mick Jagger;Keith Richards

Entered Chart

Sep 8, 1973

Peak Date

Oct 20, 1973

Released

20 August 1973

Recorded

November–December 1972, Dynamic Sounds Studio Kingston, Jamaica

Catalog #

Rolling Stones 19105

B-Side

Silver Train

The big rumor about this song is that it was written about David Bowie's wife, Angela, who wrote in her autobiography that she once walked in on Bowie and Mick Jagger in bed together - a story Jagger denies. According to the rumor, Jagger wrote this song to appease her, but it was Jagger's bandmate Keith Richards who wrote most of the song. Jagger had this to say about it: "People began to say that song was written about David Bowie's wife but the truth is that Keith wrote the title. He said, 'Angie,' and I think it was to do with his daughter. She's called Angela. And then I just wrote the rest of it." There was also speculation that Richards' girlfriend Anita Pallenberg inspired this song, but Keith cleared it up in his 2010 autobiography Life, where he wrote: "While I was in the [Vevey drug] clinic (in March-April 1972), Anita was down the road having our daughter, Angela. Once I came out of the usual trauma, I had a guitar with me and I wrote 'Angie' in an afternoon, sitting in bed, because I could finally move my fingers and put them in the right place again, and I didn't feel like I had to s--t the bed or climb the walls or feel manic anymore. I just went, 'Angie, Angie.' It was not about any particular person; it was a name, like ohhh, Diana. I didn't know Angela was going to be called Angela when I wrote 'Angie.' In those days you didn't know what sex the thing was going to be until it popped out." >> A rare ballad for The Stones, this was the first single released from Goat's Head Soup. It wasn't typical of their sound, since most of the band's material at the time was hard and aggressive. Still, it was a huge hit, and their only ballad that hit #1 in the US. This is one of the few Rolling Stones songs that is acoustic. Keith Richards wrote this song in Switzerland after the Exile on Main St. album had been approved by the record company, but before it was released. "Angie" was one of the first songs The Stones recorded for Goat's Head Soup, which they first attempted in Jamaica at the Dynamic Sounds studio in Kingston. They got very little done at these sessions, arriving nightly with armed escort and locking the doors until they were done for the day. Much of the album was done at sessions in Los Angeles and London under more hospitable conditions. The Angela Bowie rumor picked up steam in 1990, when she went on The Joan Rivers Show and claimed she once walked in on David Bowie and Mick Jagger in bed together naked. What's even more shocking is that Rivers had her own talk show. She was quickly replaced by Arsenio Hall. Report this ad Nicky Hopkins played piano on this track. He became part of the band's inner circle after working on the 1966 Stones album Between The Buttons. >> In 2005 German chancellor Angela Merkel appropriated this acoustic ballad for her Christian Democratic Union Party. "We're surprised that permission wasn't requested," said a Stones spokesman of Merkel's choice of song. "If it had been, we would have said no." The line from this song, "Ain't it time we said goodbye," was used as the title to Robert Greenfield's 2014 book, which chronicles his time covering the Stones' 1971 British tour and their Exile on Main St. sessions for Rolling Stone magazine. Greenfield is not a fan of the song, however, calling it "soppy and far too sweet for my taste." Angela was born in a Catholic hospital, and her name was bestowed upon her by the nuns. "I'm glad she was called Angela, because Anita had adorned her with all these really weird names like Dandelion, which Angela quickly got rid of as soon as she grew up," Richards told Uncut magazine in 2020. "So she's Angie now, strangely enough."

Angie, Angie
When will those clouds all disappear
Angie, Angie
Where will it lead us from here

  With no lovin' in our souls
  And no money in our coats
  You can't say we're satisfied
  Angie, Angie
  You can't say we never tried

Angie, you're beautiful, yeah
But ain't it time we said goodbye
Angie, I still love you
Remember all those nights we cried

  All the dreams we held so close
  Seemed to all go up in smoke
  Let me whisper in your ear
  (whispered): Angie, Angie
  Where will it lead us from here

------ instrumental interlude ------

  Oh Angie don't you weep
  Or your kisses, they'll taste sweet
  I hate that sadness in your eyes
  But Angie, Angie
  Ain't it time we said goodbye

------ instrumental interlude ------

  With no lovin' in our souls
  And no money in our coats
  You can't say we're satisfied
  But Angie, I still love you baby
  Everywhere I look I see your eyes
  There ain't a woman that comes close to you
  Come on baby dry your eyes

Angie, Angie
Ain't it good to be alive
Angie, Angie
They can't say we never tried

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