if there's one song i can listen to all the time, no matter what mood i'm in it's torn & frayed.
it's dark but friendly, happy an melancholic. it's not a hit but very catchy....
it's just a fantastic little song! very underrated!
that's all i have to say for now... ;-)

Yeah, I love it too... Best acoustic on Exile, I love it much more than Sweet Virginia or Sweet Black Angel ;-)

If I remember well, it's from Mick to Keith? Sweet ;-^)

It's a pity it wasn't performed live too much (don't like the Toronto 2002 version).

yes me too, i like this song really much, and, it touches my soul and my heart everytime i hear it ... yo

Too bad it was played only twice on the Licks tour....I was lucky enough to see that 2nd performance at the Aragon in Chicago.

I had a record of it that skipped at the end when the beautiful steel slide solo is playing with the pianos and the skip was in perfect time with the song....so I often just let it skip and skip and skip and skip and skip so the song would be about 8 minutes long.

Man I love that song...

I thought this was said to be more about Gram Parsons than Keith, though I don't remember who said it

BEAUTIFUL SONG!!!!!!!!

"Well my heavy throbbers itchin' just to lay a solid rhythm down"

It is probably most auto-biographical song they have ever done. It's about ballrooms and smelly bordellos, nerves on first nights, backstage groupies, trying to kick the drugs, but as " long as the guitar plays, let it steal your heart away "
A classic in every sense of the word.

me too. This is one of my special ones from Exile along with Casino Boogie, ADTL, and about 15 more. Everyone loves Loving Cup including me, but to me T&F with more guitar less piano is even more special.

What a great surprise Torn and Frayed... such delicious layers to it. The wonderful opening with the strong acoustic and the great harmonies with Mick and Keith...the mournfull lyrics but sung with such a lifting chorus... and that peddle slide is haunting... reminds one a lot of some of the slide on All Things Must Pass (Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp). Charlie smacks the snare and gives it that punch that wakes you out of the heroin soaked country jive. You get an image of skeletons waltzing in an after hours drug store between isles of cough medicine and syringes. Great imagery in that song and seems to tell the Stones' story like a good pop up picture book.

BEAT SONG ON EXILE< PERIOD! KEEF AT HIS BEST!

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whitem8
What a great surprise Torn and Frayed... such delicious layers to it. The wonderful opening with the strong acoustic and the great harmonies with Mick and Keith...the mournfull lyrics but sung with such a lifting chorus... and that peddle slide is haunting... reminds one a lot of some of the slide on All Things Must Pass (Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp). Charlie smacks the snare and gives it that punch that wakes you out of the heroin soaked country jive. You get an image of skeletons waltzing in an after hours drug store between isles of cough medicine and syringes. Great imagery in that song and seems to tell the Stones' story like a good pop up picture book.

thanks for exactly putting into words what i wanted to say! was to hard for me in english.

torn and frayed is a classic, one of the stones best.

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wee bobby lennox
torn and frayed is a classic, one of the stones best.

together with rocks off and ADTL it's the essence of exile for me

The Vancouver '72 show is frequently dismissed by people. "Sloppy." "Rehearsal." But I think the performance of T&F is wonderful. It stumbles early, but Keith and Taylor find a groove and it ends all too early for me. The song has a wonderful voyeuristic feel. You are hearing music being created and not merely performed.

I love "Torn and Frayed". Always have since the first time I heard it. I remember getting my first copy of Exile and going through the album, listening to the first few seconds of every song and "Torn and Frayed" really caught my attention. Something about that acoustic guitar intro is quite disarming. It was the first song I listened to all the way through on the album. I was in love with it from the very beginning, although I couldn't understand half of the lyrics. It was just such a bittersweet tune. The general feeling seemed to sum up life for me at that point, with all it's joy and sadness. The good and the bad, all rolled into one. Being a musician myself, the line "just as long as the guitar plays, let it steal your heart away" has always been very meaningful to me. Sometimes it can bring a tear to my eye. The lyrics are a meditation on the musician's lifestyle, mostly negative aspects. It's hard to understand why anybody would choose this life, but that one line explains it all. It's all about the guitar. All about the music. Everything else, the lifestyle, the drugs, the rootless existence, are merely by products of the musician's immense love for his craft. It's not a job, it's his life.

I put this one on the jukebox in the bar last night...

Beautiful...
Torn and Frayed is the essence of the Stones; every little song is a
Chef d'oeuvre...
CC where do you live ? For me the nearest bar where I can play Stones' music at the jukebox is some 1300 miles away, downtown Reading, UK.
I can listen to the Stones all day long at home, in the car, at work, as loud as I want, I can play their music on guitar as loud as I want.
I still miss a small pub where I can put a nickel in the machine for Torn And Frayed...

hey grizz, this was in Brooklyn, NYC. Plenty of jukeboxes here, although most use CDs at best and at worst have moved to digital files. Where are you located? I wouldn't mind trading if I could play music loud at home! That's one of the drawbacks of city life...

CC, I live in Bucharest, Romania. Nice forest for a grizzly, just about 2 000 000 people around. I live in an appartment block, have crazy neighbours. Sometimes they party and I sleep, sometimes I play guitar and they sleep. It rocks...

aha, so you're in a major city as well, just not one with jukeboxes, or Stones on the jukeboxes! Sounds like a great atmosphere, would love to visit someday...

<<The Vancouver '72 show is frequently dismissed by people. "Sloppy." "Rehearsal." But I think the performance of T&F is wonderful.>>

Agree, like that version too...including the couple of times when the song almost stops(Sounds kind a rough? Indeed!) Great guitar by Taylor near the end. Great back up vox by Keith.

It's Jim Price playing the Hammond organ by the way.. (trumpet player in the MT-area))
He's giving the song this nice & warm overall carpet.

just because i fell in love once more with that beauty of a track!

Absolutely great ,one of my favourites ( all time )

They totally lost the plot in not playing it in '72. Would have been perfect after SV and before YCAGWYW.

"The wonder of Jimi Hendrix was that he could stand up at all he was so pumped full of drugs." Patsy, Patsy Stone

In seems like the song never stops.In fact it has two keys,and that might be the secret..

Torn & Frayed is what we decided to call our Stones cover band from 94-95!

[thepowergoats.com]

WHEN I WAS YOUNG I USED TO THINK THE JAGSTER SANG BORN AND STAYED BUT I KNOW BETTER NOW.

I agree comments about the Sadness and joy in this song. It has this feeling about it that helps you hang in there through a hard time. For me the ogran is a really important part of the sound.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-08-20 06:55 by ryanpow.