A powder keg of an opener, heightened by the fact that it’s unlike any other song you can imagine, one that’s impossible to reference.
The structure, both shambolic and organic, with horns, back-and-forth clicky guitars (Richards employs his five-string open G tuning), piano and organ all duking it out, with the winner being Charlie Watts’ snare and cymbals - he wallops his crashes more here than in any other number in the Stones canon.
Jagger’s vocals are bi-polar, whipping around the fracas. On one track, he’s belting it out in a mid-rangy tenor, while on another he’s all raspy and creepshow-ish. A fascinating mixture.
The remaster cranks the overall volume but doesn’t affect the original’s balance. The breakdown is still a disorienting sea of reverb, with Billy Preston’s organ being the predominant instrument. And then the band kicks back in and drives the dense wall of sound home.