Rolling Stones – "Ruby Tuesday" (1966)

She would never say where she came from

Yesterday don't matter if it's gone

“Ruby Tuesday” was the B-side of “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” which we featured in yesterday’s 2 or 3 lines.  

But because “Let’s Spend the Night Together” was such a naughty song, “Ruby Tuesday” ended up getting a lot more radio airplay.  It spent most of February 1967 in the top ten, taking over the #1 spot in the Billboard “Hot 100” the first week of March.

Mick Jagger didn’t write the words or the music to “Ruby Tuesday.”  Marianne Faithful said that Brian Jones came up with the melody, but others say that Keith Richards deserves most of the credit.

Linda Keith

Everyone agrees that Richards wrote the lyrics.  According to his autobiography, the song was about Linda Keith, a London model who was his girlfriend in 1966 when she heard an unknown Jimi Hendrix  perform in New York City.

Linda was blown away by Jimi’s talent.  She loaned him one of Keith’s guitars (his own had been pawned) and started hanging out with him. 

Keith told Linda’s parents that she was abusing drugs – a textbook case of the pot calling the kettle black – and her father came to New York City and dragged her back to London.  Linda eventually got married and moved to New Orleans.

Click here to read more about Linda Keith.

Wouldn’t you love it if your mother had been a model for British Vogue and became Keith Richards’ girlfriend and took drugs with Jimi Hendrix and inspired a #1 song by the Rolling Stones?  (I bet your mother was BORING by comparison with Linda Keith!  God knows mine was.)

Linda’s and Jimi’s relationship is the subject of a 2013 movie called Jimi: All Is By My Side, which starred Outkast’s André 3000 as Hendrix.  Here’s the trailer for that movie:

The first Ruby Tuesday restaurant was opened in 1972, several years after “Ruby Tuesday” was released.  Some sources say that one of the owner’s fraternity brothers suggested that he name his restaurant after the Stones’ song – another source says Bob Hope gave him the idea.  (Bob Hope?  Really?)

By the way, it took two Stones to play the bass violin part of "Ruby Tuesday" – Bill Wyman handled the fingering, while Keith Richards did the bowing.

Here’s “Ruby Tuesday”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: