The Stones have created some of the greatest song intros of all time, this is one the best...

"Well I hope we're not too messianic or a trifle too satanic. " What a great line

One of their best songs on one of their very best albums, Let It Bleed, has been in rotation at this address since it came out. They simply are one of the best and still touring in 2024, 62+ years and still rocking, freaking amazing! From their great 2023 album, Hackney Diamonds, do Sweet Sounds of Heaven with Lady Gaga helping out. No band in my lifetime has had a longer or greater career. Enjoy! 🎵🎸🎤🎸🎹🎷🎶

The Monkey refers to an addiction to Smack.

everything the Stones ever done was in my opinion awesome, I can't get enough of your venture into the oldies, Biz you rock, thanks for sharing this great tune with all of us.

Great album. Beggar's Banquet to Some Girls albums is their creative peak.

The Stones were always the funkiest of the classic rock bands. From the same album, check out Live With Me and the fantastic title cut, Let It Bleed. Both have a fantastic groove. Amazing album!

This is the only stones era that i truely appreciate❤️🤘somegirls album is killer too. James browns style all over

Greatest rock band ever IMO. The run from Beggars Banquet to Exile on Main Street continues to feed my soul 50+ years after they were released! Amazing stuff. I suggest a deep cut next from the Exile album - “Ventilator Blues” - so gritty, raw and awesome!

One of my favorites, I like this era of the Stones.

You really picked a great one here 👍

The "Monkey Man" was an Italian artist they knew who made independent films and painted. Schifano or something. He lived a wild life, as described in the schlyrics. A lot of alternative artists were written about back then, like Warhol, Lou Reed, Frank Zappa.

That riff is f'ing FIRE!

MONKEY MAN IS MY FAVORITE STONES TUNE., HANDS DOWN🏆

Recorded in April 1969, the song's introduction features distinctive vibraphone, bass, guitar, and piano. Richards plays main riff and slide guitar solo, Jagger provides vocals, producer Jimmy Miller plays tambourine, Nicky Hopkins plays piano, Charlie Watts provides drums, while Bill Wyman plays vibraphone and bass. Wyman's vibraphone is mixed onto the left channel together with Hopkins' piano.

Deep cuts!!!! Takes me back to listening to ALbUMS! Liner notes cover art and sometimes a poster or lyrics! Those were the days my friends. No ear buds, big fat puffy headphones! Lots of times Ibeas too young to understand all the references but the music was always banging!

"Monkey on your back" meant you were struggling with heroin back in the sixties.

I just love how all the food groups are added with the music blues and rock in this song. It smacks hard, cold and hot. It is so real like too. Pure Genius!!! Thanks, Rolling Stones.

I f-in love this song. It never gets old. Imagine sitting in a garage with your friends and busting out this song.

'I'm a cold Italian pizza' will always be one of the greatest lyrics of all time

“Salt of the Earth”, with lead vocals from Keith Richards, is also a highlight off this superb album.

Definitely in the top 5 Rolling Stones songs.

The single greatest rock n roll band ever - forever and ever

This is the Stones at their best....RAW....RAW>>> "I'M A Monkey Baby """"... this rocks like no other stones song...love the piano....

Gimme Shelter gets all the credit but the bit with Monkey Man in Goodfellas is ‘chefs kiss’

Banger! Charlie Watts, RIP. "Monkey Man" is the underrated masterpiece from their Let It Bleed album. The studio version is haunting, edgy, and funky, with an instrumental passage that pointed the way for the second half of Derek & The Dominos "Layla" to walk a year or so later. The lyrics reflect on the decadence and debauchery of the rock and roll lifestyle The Rolling Stones led in the sixties. Social prudes back then likely tossed "monkey man" at them as an epithet in the same vein as those racist fools in Europe who sometimes throw bananas at Black soccer players. Those fools wish so badly that we human beings were angels, yet their behavior betrays the fact that ultimately we are all apes.

One of my favorites!

Love this song and this album!

Great tune, great album

Great song, and as always, I stay to the end to hear your amazing and entertaining commentary. People need to watch your videos right to the end. The Big Sou BizMatik is excellent from the start to the finish.

The guitar, the guitar, the guitar! ...and the piano.

Not a big Stones fan, but I love this song! You are killing it tonight!

great reaction! it's like i'm hearing the song for the first time when i hear you break it down. amazing! many thanks to you.

He's saying we are all just monkeys...though we think are more.

Saw them do this live. Haven’t been the same since.

FUCK YEAH! Stones Forever!

I love the Stones' deep cuts. One you oughta check out next is called FINGERPRINT FILE. Super groovy waist-level funk from their Seventies era.

The older Stones albums are the best! love it!

Here we go!

That's a banger Biz! Thank you

More Stones & Thank You!!!

Goodfellas brought me here!

Perhaps my favorite Stones record.

Only Mick Jagger can pull off this song. Only Jagger

Biz, a great song off of a great album! Suggest you listen to Get Yer Ya Yas Out. It's a live album from the tour right after this album. Pure 🔥 🔥

Love this album. Great request, and of course great reaction. 😎

I LIKE this song. Funky + Rock & Roll + I don’t know, Country? With keyboard master Nicky Hopkins = The Rolling Stones. Thank you for this. Maybe some “Stray Cat Blues” sometime? It sounds like it would fit right in in swinging Atlanta.

love it

Glad I “found” your channel… really enjoying listening. This is one of my favorite albums, find it perfect + visceral. This really set the tone in “Goodfellas.” It’s about drugs, heroin… “all my friends are junkies…” and “monkey on the back” is once you’ve formed a habit. But I’d put money on them having done a little swingin’, back then, too. Ha!

Hell yes 🙌🏻 Even if it’s about drugs. The groove.

Came for the reaction, stayed for the wild AF story, lmao! "Back to the song," lol! Seriously, tho, back to the song, I think "Monkey" means "addict," maybe , as early on Mick sings "All my friends are junkies!" as you may recall. Whatever he's singing about, the groove is there, and this is from the best period of the Stones (approx 1967-1973) ever!

Watts hits the Hi hat on the 3 here ! He seldom did !

Those Vibes..!

Charlie Watts dropin' the Samsonite 👑💥👑

Beatles Stones,😊

This whole album is fire and i love this track. Great review

3:09 just listen to that f-in groove

Mick really wanted to be the 5th Monkee!

The stones!

My favorite Stones album.

This song Rules!

Ya man, this is my "Desert Island" album. If I was marooned on a desert island & I had only one record album for eternity it would be this one...."Let It Bleed".

love the guitar intro

Excellent...

I believe this is my fav Stones song👍

Sway. Moonlight Mike. I've Got the Blues

Awesome reaction as always.

This is a good 1 Biz.

Great song and album. ☮️

Nice Bizz,love this song. Rock on man!!!😃

Great choice Biz. The Stones closed out the '60's with arguably the greatest album of that decade. LET IT BLEED is as close to perfect an album as you will find. Check out the title track and the awesome "Midnight Rambler".

❤️

Check out Far Away Eyes. Different vibe again.

I think he's responding to critics saying the stones are uncivilized, crass, even devil worshippers. So he is kind of comically ,tongue in cheek,calling himself a monkey and hopes stones fans are monkees too.

Nope. ...while this may be one of numerous, simultaneous meanings/references in this song ..."Monkey" is a "reverse flip" on the expression: "Monkey on your back." "Monkey on your back," initially, just expressed: a problem. A continual problem, one that someone has a problem getting rid of or getting away from (etc.). By the point in time that THIS was written, the expression "monkey on your back" had become a common euphemism for: a problem with/an addiction to heroin (H, thereby, being "the monkey.") That-is-to-say: horse wasn't the ONLY possible "monkey" ...however, among such subsegments of the populace such as: musicians, fashion models, 🤷🤷 ...the most common usage would have been: a reference to a heroin problem (or someone with one). ...So, my understanding of this was always that: The protagonist in the song is so dope-fiending now that he's happy he's with a woman who is in the same situation/state-of-mind. -Otherwise they couldn't 'understand' each other/be around one another/enjoy each others' company (although addicts DON'T enjoy company, at all! Solely: the company of the horse! 🤦😭 ...I am not certain of all of the chronological specifics, here ...but Keith (absolutely) and Mick, as well, ...Keith was heavy on the dope and Mick was. either, "coming out of" a deep dive, trying to avoid going 'back in' or starting to fall back in, already. This was just prior to the "major cocaine phase," as well ... So: "Monkey Man" is, most probably, a dope fiend.

YES THANK YOU!!! NOW WE ARE TALKING. AS I HAVE TOLD YOU NEVER EVER EVER AS GOOD AS WHEN MICK TAYLOR WAS THEIR LEAD GUITARIST. DO ALL THE MICK TAYLOR YOU CAN

Keith Richards plays all the guitar parts

If I could only own one Stones' album I think it would be Let It Bleed.

I've heard this song many times but never knew the title. Just liked the sound and beat.

Biz I have a suggestion for another kind of obscure but awesome Stones song that has that witty or peculiar lyrics: Jigsaw Puzzle.

Monkey ain’t about swinging, monkey is a reference to drugs and the energy off the smack. Sure it grooves, but it has a whole other vibe as well (triffle too satanic)

Do this song live with Lisa Fischer….amazing

🌟 Gretsch 🌟

Keith playing electric & slide on this.Before Mick Taylor replaced Brian..

2:01. But I pulled on through

Check out far away eyes

Two long adverts to get to this shit.

2:34. Stones Grooves got ya. I see how it took ya

You blew your chance man, 😂 BTW the song is about having a monkey on his back (addiction)

Proof that Keith has always been the man on guitar. Taylor provided his Keith influenced guitar work, just too smooth and not as rough as Keith. Rock n roll was never meant to be smooth. Rough and in your face. Any guitar player who thinks this is just a simple song are simple themselves. Brilliant guitar playing and 👍👍 to Charlie and the rest on this 😛❗

MICK TAYLOR !!!!!!!!

This had to be remixed because the vocals are drowned out by the music unlike the original

He was compared to a performing monkey by a British press writer. He wrote about the perception of the OG rock star

Handsome.... Try "Wild Horse's.... Be Well....

evolution sond

'Monkey' from the French word manque, meaning lacking.

I think that the Mick Taylor era was the dirtiest and best👍

Hand of Fate by the Stones .Monkey Man is about Heroin its nothing new I new older guy who spent 35 years of his life in 5 to 7 year sentences in prison.He died a couple yesrs ago he was 82 years old

Maybe mean-tall was bi.

Lesbian story kept me waiting. Find out it has nothing to do with the song 😂