ONE OF THE highlights of Some Girls became yet another number one hit single (their eighth!). The beat drew from another musical influence: disco.
RON WOOD: Mick has a history of checking out what the kids are listening to, whether it was during the disco era or funk, or whatever. He always keeps one eye and one ear on what they’re listening to and how we might be able to apply it to what we do and how we might put our stamp on it.
MICK JAGGER: We didn’t intentionally set out to make a disco record. To me, it’s just like . . . that bass drum beat and my falsettos just fit nicely around the bass part. Vocally, it’s more gospel, because nowadays disco records are much more repetitive . . . “You know, I wanna dance and shake my booty,” repeated eighty-nine times!
BILL WYMAN: The idea for those [bass] lines came from Billy Preston, actually. We’d cut a rough demo a year or so earlier after a recording session. I’d already gone home, and Billy picked up my old bass when they started running through that song. He started doing that bit because it seemed to be the style of his left hand. So when we finally came to do the tune, the boys said, “Why don’t you work around Billy’s idea?” So I listened to it once and heard that basic run and took it from there. It took some changing and polishing, but the basic idea was Billy’s.
CHARLIE WATTS: A lot of those songs like “Miss You” on Some Girls . . . were heavily influenced by going to the discos. You can hear it in a lot of those four-on-the-floor rhythms and the Philadelphia-style drumming. Mick and I used to go to discos a lot . . . It was a great period. I remember being in Munich and coming back from a club with Mick singing one of the Village People songs—‘YMCA,” I think it was—and Keith went mad, but it sounded great on the dance floor.