Released 23 April 1971 Writer(s) Jagger/Richards | Length 7:15 | |
Recorded March–May 1970, Olympic Studios, London Genre Blues rock, hard rock, jazz-rock Label Rolling Stones/Atlantic | ||
"Can't You Hear Me Knocking" is a song by English rock band The Rolling Stones from their 1971 album Sticky Fingers. The song is over seven minutes long, and begins with a Keith Richards open-G tuned guitar intro. At two minutes and forty-three seconds, an instrumental break begins, with Rocky Dijon on congas; tenor saxophonist Bobby Keys performs an extended saxophone solo over the guitar work of Richards and Mick Taylor, punctuated by the organ work of Billy Preston. At 4:40 Taylor takes over from Keys and carries the song to its finish with a lengthy guitar solo.
Contents
Inspiration
Richards on writing the guitar riff,
"Can't You Hear Me Knocking came out flying - I just found the tuning and the riff and started to swing it and Charlie picked up on it just like that, and we're thinking, hey, this is some groove. So it was smiles all around. For a guitar player it's no big deal to play, the chopping, staccato bursts of chords, very direct and spare."
Recording
On the recording, Richards said in 2002,
"(The jam at the end wasn't inspired by Carlos Santana.) We didn't even know they were still taping. We thought we'd finished. We were just rambling and they kept the tape rolling. I figured we'd just fade it off. It was only when we heard the playback that we realised, Oh, they kept it going. Basically we realised we had two bits of music. There's the song and there's the jam."
Taylor recalled in a 1979 interview,
"Can't You Hear Me Knocking... is one of my favourites... (The jam at the end) just happened by accident; that was never planned. Towards the end of the song I just felt like carrying on playing. Everybody was putting their instruments down, but the tape was still rolling and it sounded good, so everybody quickly picked up their instruments again and carried on playing. It just happened, and it was a one-take thing. A lot of people seem to really like that part."
Taylor continued,
"I used a brown Gibson ES-345 for Dead Flowers and the solo on Can't You Hear Me Knocking."
An early alternate take of the song (with dummy/placeholder lyrics) was released in June 2015 on the Deluxe and Super Deluxe editions of the reissued Sticky Fingers album.
Jagger noted in the Spotify Landmark interview on the album that the key was too high for his voice and that "I [did] lots of vocals, harmonies to sort of hide the fact that I didn't really hit the notes that great in the chorus bits. "
Accolades
In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine listed it at #25 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time."
Personnel
The Rolling Stones live performances
The number was part of the Rolling Stones' concert repertoire during their Licks Tour in 2002–2003 and A Bigger Bang Tour in 2005–2007. In these renditions, Mick Jagger played a harmonica solo after Keys' sax solo, and Ronnie Wood performed the extended guitar solo. A live recording was released on the band's 2003 DVD set Four Flicks and on the 2004 concert album Live Licks. It was also performed live during shows in 2013, with Mick Taylor appearing as a special guest with the band.