Length 11:13 | Writer(s) Jagger/Richards | |
Released 15 April 1966 (UK)
20 June 1966 (US) Recorded 3–8 December 1965, RCA Studios, Los Angeles Genre Rock, blues rock, psychedelic rock Label Decca/ABKCO (U.K.)
London/ABKCO (U.S. and Canada) | ||
"Goin' Home" is a song by rock band The Rolling Stones featured on their 1966 album Aftermath.
Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Goin' Home" is a long blues-inspired track that is notable as one of the first songs by a rock and roll band to break the ten-minute mark and the longest recorded song on any Stones album. While many bands had experimented with length in live performances, and Bob Dylan had written many songs by this point which reached the five/six-minute mark, "Goin' Home" was the first "jam" recorded expressly for an album. In an interview with the magazine Rolling Stone, Richards said:
It was the first long rock and roll cut. It broke that two-minute barrier. We tried to make singles as long as we could do then because we just liked to let things roll on. Dylan was used to building a song for 20 minutes because of the folk thing he came from.
That was another thing. No one sat down to make an 11-minute track. I mean 'Goin' Home', the song was written just the first 2 and a half minutes. We just happened to keep the tape rolling, me on guitar, Brian [Jones] on harp, Bill [Wyman, on bass] and Charlie [Watts, on drums] and Mick. If there's a piano, it's Stew [Ian Stewart].
Jack Nitzsche, a regular Stones contributor throughout the 1960s, here performs percussion.
The song, while lengthy, is built around a common theme, as opposed to later Stones songs of great length like "Midnight Rambler" or "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" which are divided into distinct sections punctuated by differing instrumentations. "Goin' Home" plays as a long jam, eventually deconstructing Richards' guitar piece, Jagger's lyrics, and Watts' drum lines which build in power as the song progresses. Jagger's lyrics are called "a basic expression of [his] pining for his girl and determining to go home and get him some. It's the bumpety-bump, ascending chorus of announcing his intentions to go home that's the most 'pop' element of the song."
"Goin' Home" can be heard in the happening sequence of 1967 film Col cuore in gola.