Dave's Song of the Day
Angie – The Rolling Stones
Wednesday song of the day: No, today’s song is not about David Bowie’s wife.
Angie was a rare acoustic ballad by the Rolling Stones, off their 1973 album
Goats Head Soup. Since it was a love song, there has long been speculation as to just who the Angie referred to in the song was.
The most often stated theory was that it was written for Angela Bowie, the then wife of David Bowie. Both Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have repeatedly denied this, however. Also, a common (and salacious) part of this rumor was that Angela Bowie caught Mick and David in bed together and demanded that Jagger write a song for her to buy her silence. This is very unlikely, especially since Keith Richards wrote the song with almost no input from Jagger. While the song is credited to both, it was normal in their songwriting partnership to credit them both on songs, no matter whether it was written by Mick or Keith separately, or by both of them.
Another popular theory says that Richards wrote it for his daughter Angela (originally named Dandelion Angela Richards). In the liner notes of a 1993 compilation album, Richards says that this is correct. However, in his 2010 autobiography, he tells a different story, pointing out that he wrote the song shortly before his daughter was even born. At the time he was in a Swiss clinic undergoing detox for his heroin addiction. Richards says, “While I was in the clinic (in March-April 1972), Anita was down the road having our daughter, Angela. Once I came out of the usual trauma, I had a guitar with me and I wrote
Angie in an afternoon, sitting in bed, because I could finally move my fingers and put them in the right place again, and I didn’t feel like I had to shit the bed or climb the walls or feel manic anymore. I just went, ‘Angie, Angie.’ It was not about any particular person; it was a name, like ohhh, Diana. I didn’t know Angela was going to be called Angela when I wrote
Angie. In those days you didn’t know what sex the thing was going to be until it popped out.”
This would seem to be the most plausible story. Other more far-fetched theories include that it was written about the actress Angie Dickinson (who had no association with the Rolling Stones), or German Chancellor Angela Merkel (who was an unknown 18-year old student when the song was written).
Regardless of who was the inspiration, or indeed if it was no specific person and the name was chosen simply because it just fit in well with the song structure,
Angie was a million-selling hit. It was released as the first single off the
Goats Head Soup album in August 1973 and climbed to #1 on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart, as well as being the #1 song in numerous other countries.
View: https://youtu.be/aVLBF-UKevY
Tomorrow: You could tell I was no debutante