The Night Pass Slow

The Rolling Stones “Moonlight Mile (Live 2015)”

My friend Sean often says that out of all the major “classic rock” bands, The Rolling Stones are the ones who are worst served by classic rock radio because when you reduce them down to just their biggest hits, you lose a lot of what they’re truly capable of doing. You get to hear some of that in The Beatles and Led Zeppelin’s biggest hits, but you lose most of the Stones’ grit and swing and funk and drama. You certainly miss out on a song like “Moonlight Mile,” which is as grand and cinematic as rock music gets without veering into contrived bombast. Thousands of musicians have written “lonely on the road” songs, but few come close to this, with Jagger conveying the slow drag of his journey home, the nervous anticipation of getting closer but still feeling so far away, and the pure romance of just yearning to be with the one you love again. It’s a song that comes from a place of exhaustion, but you can sense a real love for the road in the music – part of what makes “Moonlight Mile” so rich is that there’s a tension between his passions, and a resignation to this just being the way life is going to be. I mean, I am not a driver, but there are few other songs that make me want to drive around at night more than this song.

This recording is from just a couple months ago when the Stones played all of Sticky Fingers in concert; the show is now available as a live album. “Moonlight Mile” comes across particularly well 44 years after it first came out. This is partly because Jagger’s voice has aged so well, but I think more in that the sentiment and mood of the song suits the older Jagger well. There’s a lot of grace and dignity to the song, and he really highlights that in his performance today.

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