“Waiting on a Friend” by The Rolling Stones

"Waiting on a Friend" was the second single from the Rolling Stones' 1981 album Tattoo You, but it had been waiting a long time itself. The band first cut it as "Waiting for a Friend" in Kingston, Jamaica, around the turn of 1972 into 1973, during the Goats Head Soup sessions, and it sat without words until Mick Jagger came back to it with a tender lyric about the friendships inside the band.

The result is the Stones at their most relaxed: Nicky Hopkins' rolling piano, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman easing along, Keith Richards on backing vocals and Sonny Rollins' saxophone curling through it all. Jagger had a video in mind for the new lyric, which made it the first Stones single built with MTV in view. It reached No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.

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