Ruby Tuesday shot to the top of the charts Stateside when radio stations, scandalized by the overt sexuality of Let’s Spend the Night Together, flipped the 45 and played the B-Side instead (cue Grandpa Simpson: back in our day, rich men flew by in their Zeppelins, and music came on two-sided plastic discs that had bumps on them, which you played on the Victrola, either through the giant ear trumpet or the rubber pneumatic listening tubes…). That’s our Keef (shades of Nigel Tufnell discussing his heartbreaking, Bach-inspired magnum opus, Lick My Love Pump). And all you’ve got left is the piano and the guitar and a pair of panties. I don’t know, she had pissed off somewhere…That’s one of those things – some chick you’ve broken up with.
It was probably written about Linda Keith not being there (laughs). It’s often described as being about one of the band’s groupies, but Richards has said it was about then-girlfriend Linda Keith, while often describing it in terms that don’t even hint at its true tone and substance: Credited, like most of their original compositions, to Jagger/Richards, Ruby Tuesday was in fact written mainly by Keith Richards with input from Jones, and Mick, to his credit, has always insisted he had nothing to do with it, though he’s always loved singing it.
A poignant reminder of a time when even the rowdy, disreputable bad boys who terrified your mother could release something so steeped in beautiful sadness and regret that it still tugs at your heart strings over 50 years later, Ruby Tuesday is a classically influenced ballad arranged for cello, piano, and a mournful turn on the recorder by poor, doomed Brian Jones, who lends a particularly delicate touch to a song that sounds about as much like Street Fighting Man – or Roll Over Beethoven, for that matter – as a Nightingale sounds like a Great Dane.
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