95 Songs of Summer, #83 - "Honky Tonk Women" (1969)

So just for the heck of it, let's do a little time-bend back to where we started this morning, the late summer of 1969.  And no, we're not talking about that Bryan Adams song - we're talking Rolling Stones, baby, and about as good as they ever got.  No less an authority than Greil Marcus wrote that the song "would make a great 20-minute track" on their new album, and he was absolutely right.  And even a 9-year old kid, having little to no idea what the singer was wailing about, knew that this song was the goods.  It really didn't, and really doesn't, get much better than this.

Stephen King is a genius at, among many other things, finding a spot for great songs like this one in his novels.  And "Honky Tonk Women" plays a very small but very important role in "11/22/63," his most recent novel, about a man who goes back in time to prevent the assassination of President Kennedy.  Well, that man happens to be a Stones fan, and when you're a Stones fan, sometimes you just start singing the songs out loud, and you just might forget that you've gone back to a time when...well, they didn't know them Rollin' Stones, nosiree they did not.  And when you do something like that, well who knows what might happen.

The Rolling Stones, "Honky Tonk Women," from the summer of 1969.