Moonlight Mile (song)

"Moonlight Mile" is a song from The Rolling Stones' 1971 album Sticky Fingers.

Credited to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Moonlight Mile" is widely considered to be one of the Rolling Stones' most underappreciated ballads. Recording began in March 1970 at Stargroves. The song was the product of an all-night session between Jagger and guitarist Mick Taylor. Taylor had taken a short guitar piece recorded by Richards (entitled "Japanese Thing") and reworked it for the session. Jagger performs the song's prominent acoustic guitar riff. It was Taylor's idea to add a string arrangement by Paul Buckmaster to the song. Piano is played by regular Rolling Stones trumpet player Jim Price.

The lyrics are elliptical and mysterious, but touch on the alienation of life on the road.

In his review of the song, Bill Janovitz says, "Though the song still referenced drugs and the road life of a pop-music celebrity, it really is a rare example of Jagger letting go of his public persona, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the weariness that accompanies the pressures of keeping up appearances as a sex-drugs-and-rock & roll star." Rock critic Robert Christgau said the song, "re-created all the paradoxical distances inherent in erotic love with a power worthy of Yeats, yet could also be interpreted as a cocaine song." This is a reference to the first stanza, which reads, "When the wind blows and the rain feels cold, With a head full of snow..."

The track was used extensively during the final episode of the first part of the HBO series The Sopranos' sixth season, "Kaisha", as well as giving its title to and being used in the 2002 motion picture Moonlight Mile. The song has been covered live by The Flaming Lips and on The 5th Dimension album, Earthbound. American hard rock supergroup Saints of the Underground covered this song for their only album Love the Sin, Hate the Sinner. Southern soul artist Lee Fields covered this song on his 2012 album Faithful Man.