“Memory Motel” by The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones let "Memory Motel" sprawl past seven minutes on Black and Blue in 1976, one of the longest things they ever put on a record, and it's a rare Stones ballad where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards split the lead vocal. Jagger started it while the two of them were staying at Eothen, Andy Warhol's estate in Montauk, New York, before the Tour of the Americas '75, and finished it out on the road; the lyric has him heading off to Baton Rouge, where the band played two warm-up shows at Louisiana State University. The motel of the title is real, out in Montauk.

Jagger's piano and Richards's electric piano carry the tune, Harvey Mandel and Wayne Perkins add guitar, and Billy Preston swells in on backing vocals. The woman at its center still keeps people guessing, with Carly Simon and Annie Leibovitz the usual suspects.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.