Keith's Royalty Statements™ (An Occasional Series)

Just gotten to the point in Keith Richards' vastly entertaining autobiography where he and Mick are starting to try and write songs -- their initial efforts not being deemed good enough for their own band, of course.

Mick and I spent months and months trying to write before we had anything we could record for the Stones. We wrote some terrible songs whose titles included "We Were Falling in Love" and "So Much in Love," not to mention "(Walking' Thru the) Sleepy City," a rip-off of "He's a Rebel." Some of them were actually medium-sized hits...I wrote a forgotten gem called "All I want is My Baby," which was recorded by P.J. Proby's valet Bobby Jameson.

That last sounds interesting, actually, but meanwhile from 1964, please enjoy The Mighty Avengers -- of whom I can find no biographical info other than they seemed to have hailed from Coventry -- and their version of the aforementioned early Jagger/Richards songwriting foray "So Much in Love."




And from their 1980 debut album, here are punkish pub-rockers The Inmates (of "Dirty Water" cover fame) and a version that sounds -- I suspect -- a lot more like the original Jagger/Richards demo.




I say "I suspect" because I can't seem to find a downloadable version of said demo version anywhere on the intertubes; if anybody knows where it might be found, I'd be forever in your debt if you'd post a link.

In any case, I've loved that Inmates cover since a vinyl promo copy arrived at my old offices at the The Magazine Formerly Known as Stereo Review. And I'll bet a Stones live version back in the day would have sounded absolutely fabulous on stage, regardless of what Keith now thinks of the song.