Wild Horses (The Rolling Stones song)

"Wild Horses"
Single by The Rolling Stones
from the album Sticky Fingers
B-side	"Sway"
Released	12 June 1971
Format	7"
Recorded	December 1969 – February 1970
Genre	Roots rock country rock folk rock
Length	5:42
Label	Rolling Stones Records RS-19101
Writer(s)	Jagger/Richards
Producer(s)	Jimmy Miller
The Rolling Stones singles chronology
"Brown Sugar" (1971) "Wild Horses" (1971) "Tumbling Dice" (1972)
Sticky Fingers track listing 10 tracks Side one "Brown Sugar" "Sway" "Wild Horses" "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" "You Gotta Move" Side two "Bitch" "I Got the Blues" "Sister Morphine" "Dead Flowers" "Moonlight Mile" Promo CD of Stripped version of "Wild Horses"

"Wild Horses" is a song by The Rolling Stones from their 1971 album Sticky Fingers, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Rolling Stone ranked it at No. 334 in its "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" list in 2004.

In the liner notes to the 1993 Rolling Stones compilation album Jump Back, Jagger states, "I remember we sat around originally doing this with Gram Parsons, and I think his version came out slightly before ours. Everyone always says this was written about Marianne but I don't think it was; that was all well over by then. But I was definitely very inside this piece emotionally." Richards says, "If there is a classic way of Mick and me working together this is it. I had the riff and chorus line, Mick got stuck into the verses. Just like "Satisfaction". "Wild Horses" was about the usual thing of not wanting to be on the road, being a million miles from where you want to be."

Originally recorded over a three-day period at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama during 2–4 December 1969 while Albert and David Maysles were shooting for the film that was titled Gimme Shelter, the song was not released until over a year later due to legal wranglings with the band's former label. Along with "Brown Sugar", it is one of the two Rolling Stones compositions from Sticky Fingers (1971) over which ABKCO Records co-owns the rights along with the Stones. It features session player Jim Dickinson on piano, Richards on electric guitar and twelve-string acoustic guitar, and Mick Taylor on acoustic guitar. Taylor uses Nashville tuning, in which the EADG strings of the acoustic guitar are strung one octave higher than in standard tuning. Ian Stewart was present at the session, but refused to perform the piano part on the track due to the prevalence of minor chords, which he disliked playing.