Moonlight Mile (song)

"Moonlight Mile" is a song from The Rolling Stones' 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

Many consider "Moonlight Mile" one of the Rolling Stones' most underappreciated ballads. "Moonlight Mile" was the last song recorded for the album. Recording took place during the end of October 1970 at Stargroves. The song was the product of an all-night session between Jagger and guitarist Mick Taylor. Taylor had taken a short guitar piece recorded by Richards (entitled "Japanese Thing") and reworked it for the session. Jagger performs the song's prominent acoustic guitar riff. Jagger felt it easier to extemporize with Taylor, as Richards was not present. It was Taylor's idea to add a string arrangement by Paul Buckmaster to the song. Jim Price—the Rolling Stones' usual trumpeter—plays piano. Taylor claims he was promised some songwriting credit, but found himself surprised that he did not when the song was released on Sticky Fingers. Richards and Jagger took credit for the song.

The lyrics are elliptical and mysterious, but touch on the alienation of life on the road.

In a review of the song, Bill Janovitz says, "Though the song still referenced drugs and the road life of a pop-music celebrity, it really is a rare example of Jagger letting go of his public persona, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the weariness that accompanies the pressures of keeping up appearances as a sex-drugs-and-rock & roll star." Rock critic Robert Christgau said the song, "re-created all the paradoxical distances inherent in erotic love with a power worthy of Yeats, yet could also be interpreted as a cocaine song." This is a reference to the first stanza, which reads, "When the wind blows and the rain feels cold, With a head full of snow..." . It was meant to be about coming down from a cocaine high. However, Mick Jagger would later dismiss any suggestions of the song being an allegory for drug use, and stated that " The feeling [he] had at that moment was how difficult it was to be touring and how [he] wasn’t looking forward to going out and doing it again. It’s a very lonely thing, and [his] lyrics reflected that".

The track featured extensively during The Sopranos' "Kaisha", the twelfth episode of the sixth season of the HBO series, as well as giving its title to and being used in the 2002 motion picture Moonlight Mile. The song has been covered live by The Flaming Lips and on The 5th Dimension album, Earthbound. American hard rock supergroup Saints of the Underground covered this song for their only album Love the Sin, Hate the Sinner. Southern soul artist Lee Fields covered this song on his 2012 album Faithful Man.