Mick Jagger / Keith Richards / 4:45
Musicians
Mick Jagger: vocals, maracas
Keith Richards: lead guitar, bass (?) backing vocals
Brian Jones: Mellotron, electric dulcimer
Bill Wyman: bass, oscillator
Charlie Watts: drums
Nicky Hopkins: piano
Eddie Kramer (?): claves
Recorded
Olympic Sound Studios, London: July–September 1967
Technical Team
Producers: the Rolling Stones
Sound engineer: Glyn Johns
Assistant sound engineer: Eddie Kramer
Mick Jagger wrote “2000 Light Years from Home” in his cell in Brixton Prison during the night of June 29–30, 1967. Found guilty of the illegal possession of Benzedrine, he had been sentenced to three months in jail. Naturally, he did not know that he would be released on bail the following day, and was seized by a feeling of terrible loneliness, hence these superb lyrics. The author displays great subtlety in expressing his anxiety through metaphor. The personal situation of the Stones’ singer is cleverly transformed into that of an astronaut whose sense of isolation grows as he approaches his final destination, the star Aldebaran. Here he is, one hundred light-years from home, then six hundred, then one thousand, and finally two thousand. The scenario is reminiscent of Ray Bradbury or Arthur C. Clarke, whose short story “The Sentinel” was made into a film by Stanley Kubrick (2001: A Space Odyssey) and released the following year.
“2000 Light Years from Home” could also be interpreted as the allegory of an LSD trip, the realization, in a certain sense, of the “politics of ecstasy” propounded by Timothy Leary. It would start with a soft explosion, bound for a star with fiery oceans, where energy is present in every part. A metaphor, Rolling Stones–style, for the Summer of Love. Musically, the song admittedly bears something of a resemblance to what the California bands were doing at the same time (for instance “Eight Miles High” by the Byrds and “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane). It would, however, exert a profound influence on the British progressive scene.
“2000 Light Years from Home” was released as a single in several countries, notably the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany. In Germany it reached number 5 on January 5, 1968 (with “She’s a Rainbow” as the B-side).
This superb song, another highly ambitious one, hints at the sound worlds that bands such as Genesis, Yes, King Crimson, and even the Moody Blues would later create. Of the British bands, it could only have been influenced by Pink Floyd, who had just released their first album (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, August 1967). This begs the question: did the Stones have a hand in the birth of British progressive rock music!?
“2000 Light Years from Home” opens with an electroacoustic sequence that includes sound effects created by playing tapes backward and by Nicky Hopkins plucking and striking his piano strings in the style of John Cage and his prepared pianos. Keith Richards then launches into a superb riff probably supported by a bass. However, what ultimately lends the texture of the song its enormous originality are the string sounds created by Brian Jones on the Mellotron, which bring a unique tone to the general atmosphere. Glyn Jones stresses this crucial contribution: “It was a nice track that anything could have been done to, but the whole conception of what Brian played changed the mood of the track from chalk to cheese and made it into what I regard as a fantastic track.”64
Charlie Watts, accompanied by Bill Wyman, creates a hypnotic rock rhythm over which can be heard Mick Jagger’s very prominent maracas and Keith’s distorted guitar. In places, Keith seems to support Bill’s bass with his own fuzz bass. Mick, highly credible in his new, psychedelic guise, gives an excellent vocal performance. Numerous sound effects have been integrated in order to evoke the interstellar ambiance of the lyrics: reversed tapes, echo at the end of the refrain (1:27), electronic patches, including an oscillator operated, according to Andy Babiuk,28 by none other than Bill Wyman (2:31). As with several tracks on the album, “2000 Light Years from Home” is made up of a number of distinct sequences, allowing various instrumental breaks to initiate changes in ambiance and rhythm. This is the case at 2:44 and 3:59, with Charlie on toms and Brian on his electric dulcimer, which intones a few limpid notes while Keith plays distorted electric chords. The number then draws to a close with the sound of the Mellotron. Finally, on two of the refrains (2:36 and 3:49), Mick and Keith’s vocals are accompanied by female voices that may perhaps be those of Marianne and Anita. “It’s a sound experience, really,” Mick would say about the album in 1995, “rather than a song experience.”19 He would also admit that “2000 Light Years from Home” was one of the two songs on the album that he actually likes, the other being “She’s a Rainbow”: “The rest of them are nonsense.”19