🎛 A Band Too Restless for Their Own Vaults
For most bands, every recorded idea is precious.
For The Rolling Stones, ideas were endless — and many of them were simply left behind.
Over six decades, the Stones have recorded hundreds of songs that never made it to an official album. Some were unfinished demos. Some were complete tracks that got pushed aside at the last minute. And some were abandoned simply because Mick and Keith wrote something better the next day.
At the time, no one thought these “throwaways” would matter.
Today, many of those lost tracks have become cult favorites, whispered about by hardcore fans, and celebrated as proof that even the Stones’ leftovers are better than most bands’ greatest hits.
🎙 The Late-Night Sessions No One Was Supposed to Hear
Throughout the late 60s and early 70s, The Rolling Stones were recording constantly — in Olympic Studios, in mobile trucks, in rented mansions.
Sometimes the tape machine was left running during jams, just in case.
And sometimes, magic happened without anyone noticing.
“Cocksucker Blues” was recorded in 1970 as a “joke” blues track. It was never meant for release — too raw, too explicit, too dangerous.
But decades later, fans discovered it… and some now consider it one of the most honest blues performances the Stones ever recorded.
Another lost gem, “Blood Red Wine,” was cut during the Beggars Banquet sessions. It never fit the final tracklist. But when it leaked years later, people were stunned by its haunting melody and thought-provoking lyrics. It became a secret favorite — a song too fragile, perhaps, for the chaos of 1968.
🧱 Outtakes from Masterpieces
When the Stones were working on Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main St., they were writing faster than they could record. Sessions in the basement of Nellcôte produced dozens of fragments: riffs, choruses, full songs that simply didn’t make the album.
One of those was “Following the River” — a slow, emotional piano ballad that sat in the vault for nearly 40 years.
When it finally surfaced on the Exile on Main St. reissue in 2010, fans and critics reacted with shock: “How did they leave this off the original album?”
But that’s the truth about The Rolling Stones at their peak: they had too much great material.
⚡ Why They Were Left Behind
There are many reasons why a song gets abandoned:
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It didn’t fit the mood of the album
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Mick and Keith couldn’t agree on the lyrics
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The producer thought it sounded “too different”
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It simply got forgotten in a sea of new ideas
Mick once said:
“We probably have entire albums that got left in some drawer because we moved on too fast.”
Keith, of course, had a different perspective:
“If it’s a good song, it’ll find a way back.”
And many of them have.
📼 The Fans Become Detectives
By the late 80s and early 90s, tape leaks and bootleg collections started flying around the underground market.
Die-hard Stones fans traded copies of unknown tracks like “I’m Goin’ Down,” “Still a Fool,” or “Criss Cross.”
They weren’t polished. Sometimes the mix was rough. But there was something authentic about them — a raw energy that didn’t always survive the final studio version.
For many listeners, these lost songs became proof that the Stones weren’t just a band — they were a constant creative storm.
🔄 When the Stones Finally Opened the Vaults
In later years, with deluxe reissues of classic albums, the band began officially releasing some of the tracks fans had only heard in bootleg form.
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“Plundered My Soul” (Exile reissue, 2010)
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“No Spare Parts” (Some Girls reissue, 2011)
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“Scarlet” (Goats Head Soup reissue, 2020)
These songs were welcomed not as “extras,” but as new classics.
Some radio stations even put them in regular rotation — decades after they were written.
It was as if the Stones’ past finally caught up with their present.
💎 The Treasure Still Hidden
Despite these reissues, insiders say the vault still contains hundreds of unreleased tracks — blues jams, acoustic demos, studio experiments, even full-produced songs that have never been heard by the public.
Will we ever hear them?
Keith once laughed and said:
“There’s stuff even I don’t remember recording. Maybe one day they’ll play it at my funeral.”
Perhaps that’s the true beauty of the Stones’ forgotten demos:
they remind us that creativity isn’t always linear, and that sometimes the songs left behind can tell the story even better than the hits.