It starts with that thwack. A dry, gated snare hit that sounds like a gunshot in a tiled bathroom, immediately followed by Keith Richards’ most iconic open-G tuning riff. You know the one. It’s played at every Super Bowl, every wedding, and probably every car dealership commercial you’ve seen since 1981. Honestly, Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones is so ubiquitous now that it’s easy to forget how close it came to never existing at all. It wasn't some masterstroke of genius written in a fever dream. It was a "discard." A piece of studio floor scrap that sat in a vault for years because the band couldn't figure out what the hell it was supposed to be.
If you ask Keith, he’ll tell you he was convinced it was a reggae song. He really was. For dozens of takes during the Black and Blue sessions in 1975, they played it with a backbeat. It was slow. It was island-style. It was, by all accounts from those in the room, pretty mediocre.
The Five-Year Storage Period
The track was basically dead. Between 1975 and 1981, the Stones were moving through a chaotic transition. They were dealing with the rise of punk, the disco era of Some Girls, and the general realization that they were no longer the young rebels of the 60s. When they started piecing together the album Tattoo You, they didn't actually have a lot of new material ready to go. They were exhausted.
Associate producer Chris Kimsey is the guy we have to thank for digging through the bins. He spent weeks listening to old tapes, looking for "the ones that got away." He found the reggae versions of Start Me Up and then, tucked away at the end of a reel from the Pathe Marconi Studios sessions in Paris, he found one single take where the band had abandoned the reggae rhythm and just played it as a straight-ahead rock song.
That was the "lightning in a bottle" moment.
They didn't record it again. They couldn't have recreated that specific energy if they tried. Jagger went in, did some vocal overdubs, tweaked the lyrics—which were originally titled "Never Stop"—and suddenly the Stones had the biggest hit of their late-career era. It’s a weirdly "clean" sounding record for a band known for being gritty. That’s because it was recorded in a literal power station (Power Station Studios in New York) for the final mix, using a bathroom as a natural reverb chamber for the drums.
Why the Riff Works (Technically Speaking)
You can’t talk about this song without talking about the Telecaster. Keith Richards famously uses five strings on his guitar for these tracks, removing the low E string and tuning to Open G (G-D-G-B-D). If you try to play Start Me Up in standard tuning, it sounds thin. It sounds wrong.
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The magic is in the "suspended" chord. When Keith hits that opening blast, he's hammering on to a C-major shape over a G-chord. It’s a rhythmic push-and-pull. He’s playing slightly behind the beat, while Charlie Watts—the bedrock of the whole operation—is playing right on top of it. This creates a tension. It feels like the song is constantly about to trip over itself, but it never does.
The Microsoft Connection and the "Sellout" Myth
There’s a massive misconception that the Stones "sold out" when they gave the song to Microsoft for the Windows 95 launch. People love to cite the rumor that Bill Gates paid $12 million for it.
Actually, it was closer to $3 million.
Still a lot of money in 1995, sure. But it was a pivotal moment in music history. Before Start Me Up was used to sell software, big rock stars generally didn't license their "sacred" hits for commercials. It was considered tacky. The Stones, being the ultimate businessmen of rock, didn't care about "tacky." They saw where the world was going. They turned a song about sexual frustration and high-energy lust into a jingle for a "Start" button on a computer desktop. It was brilliant. It was cynical. It was perfectly Stones.
Behind the Lyrics: Is it Actually About a Car?
Mick Jagger is a master of the double entendre. He’s been doing it since "Satisfaction." On the surface, the lyrics to Start Me Up sound like someone talking to a woman, or maybe a mechanic talking to a stubborn engine.
“You make a grown man cry / You make a dead man come.”
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Let's be real: it’s not about a Ford Mustang.
The lyrics are aggressive. They’re sweaty. There’s a frantic quality to Mick’s delivery on the studio version that he actually struggles to replicate live. If you listen to live bootlegs from the 1981 tour, he’s often out of breath. The song is a sprint.
The Video: Spandex and Leopard Print
We have to talk about the music video. It is perhaps the most "1981" thing to ever exist. It’s just the band in a rehearsal space. No plot. No special effects. Just Mick Jagger in incredibly tight leggings doing what can only be described as "chicken dancing" with extreme confidence.
It’s captivating because it’s so raw. You see Bill Wyman looking bored in the back, which was his trademark. You see Ron Wood and Keith Richards leaning into each other, sharing a cigarette and a guitar lick. It captured the band at a point where they were still dangerous, but they were starting to realize they were becoming an institution.
The Legacy of the "Greatest Accidental Hit"
The song has topped the Billboard Mainstream Rock tracks for weeks and reached number 2 on the Hot 100. It stayed there for what felt like an eternity. But its real power is its longevity.
Think about it.
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How many songs from 1981 still feel "modern" when they come on the radio? Most 80s production is dated by heavy synthesizers and gated reverb that sounds like a tin can. But because Start Me Up was essentially a 1975 recording polished in 1981, it has a foot in both decades. It has the 70s groove and the 80s punch.
It’s the ultimate stadium opener. When the lights go down and that first G-chord rings out, 80,000 people collectively lose their minds. It’s a Pavlovian response.
Common Misconceptions
- Myth: It was written specifically for the Tattoo You album. Fact: It was a leftover from the Black and Blue and Some Girls sessions.
- Myth: Keith Richards hates the song. Fact: Keith loves the riff; he just hated that it took him five years to realize it wasn't a reggae song.
- Myth: The song is about a race car. Fact: It’s about... well, Mick Jagger’s usual topics of interest.
How to Appreciate the Song Today
To really hear Start Me Up by the Rolling Stones for what it is, you have to strip away the commercials and the stadium noise. Go back and listen to the Tattoo You remastered version with a good pair of headphones.
Listen to the right channel. That’s Keith.
Listen to the left channel. That’s Ron Wood weaving around him.
The "weaving" is what makes the Stones the Stones. They don't play lead and rhythm guitar. They play together, finishing each other's sentences. It’s messy. It’s imperfect. There are tiny mistakes in the timing that a modern producer would "fix" with a computer in five seconds. Thank God they didn't have that technology in 1981. Those imperfections are where the soul lives.
The song represents the last time the Stones were truly at the center of the cultural zeitgeist with a new sound. After this, they became the "World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band" in a legacy sense—touring the hits, becoming a massive touring machine. But for three minutes and thirty-three seconds, they were just a band in a room that finally stopped trying to play reggae and decided to just rock.
Actionable Insights for Music Fans
If you want to dive deeper into the era that birthed this track, start by listening to the full Tattoo You album. It’s a Frankenstein’s monster of an LP, stitched together from outtakes, yet it’s widely considered their last true masterpiece.
- Check out the "Early Version": Look for the reggae bootlegs on YouTube. It will completely change how you hear the final riff. It’s fascinating to hear a legendary song in its "ugly duckling" phase.
- Watch the 1981 Hampton Coliseum Show: It’s arguably the best live version of the song ever filmed. The energy is feral.
- Analyze the Drumming: Pay attention to Charlie Watts. He doesn't hit the crash cymbal at the start of the song. He waits. Most drummers would smash the cymbal on the "one." Charlie just keeps that snare snapping. It’s a lesson in restraint.
The song isn't just a hit; it's a case study in why you should never throw away your "bad" ideas. Sometimes they just need five years to breathe.