"Slipping Away" is a song by the Rolling Stones featured on their 1989 album Steel Wheels. It is sung by guitarist Keith Richards.
Credited to Richards and Mick Jagger, "Slipping Away" is a slow ballad, a form of music Richards would embrace on the Stones' later albums. It was recorded at Montserrat's Air Studios between March and June 1989.
With Richards singing, he and Ron Wood perform the song's electric guitars. Bill Wyman provides the prominent bass while Charlie Watts performs drums. The organ and piano are performed by Chuck Leavell and electric piano by Matt Clifford. The song's brass is provided by the Kick Horns. Backing vocals are performed by Richards, Jagger, Bernard Fowler, Sarah Dash, and Lisa Fischer.
Richards recorded a re-worked acoustic version for the 1995 live album Stripped. Of the song he said at the time, "(When we recorded it for Stripped) we realized, 'Wow, that song kind of slipped away.' It just kind of tailed off at the end of Steel Wheels. We realized what potential it still had, and the band and especially the horn guys said, 'You've got to do that!' So in a way, I agreed to do it at gun point. But when I got into it, I really liked singing that song. It's got some depth."
The Stones have since performed "Slipping Away" during the 1995 leg of the Voodoo Lounge Tour, the 2002-2003 Licks Tour and throughout the 2005-2007 A Bigger Bang Tour.
Famous quotes containing the words slipping, rolling and/or stones:
“There are those who would keep us slipping back into the darkness of division, into the snake pit of racial hatred, of racial antagonism and of support for symbols of the struggle to keep African-Americans in bondage.”
—Carol Moseley-Braun (b. 1947)
“He says the waves in the ship’s wake
are like stones rolling away.
I don’t see it that way.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)