“Monkey Man” by The Rolling Stones

"Monkey Man" lurks eighth on Let It Bleed, the Rolling Stones' album of November 1969, and Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote it as a salute to the Italian pop artist Mario Schifano, whom they'd met on the set of his film Umano Non Umano! It was cut in April 1969 with Jimmy Miller producing and Glyn Johns engineering.

The intro is pure cloak-and-dagger, Bill Wyman's vibraphone chiming with Nicky Hopkins' piano, both tucked into the left channel, over bass and guitar. Then Richards takes over with the main riff and a slide solo that cuts like broken glass, Wyman doubles on bass, Charlie Watts swings it hard, Miller rattles a tambourine and Jagger leers over the top. Classic Rock History's Matthew Pollard later ranked it ninth among the Stones' deep cuts, and it's easy to hear why.

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