Ventilator Blues

"Ventilator Blues" is a song by English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones featured on their 1972 release Exile on Main St.

"Ventilator Blues" marks the first and only time guitarist Mick Taylor would be given credit alongside regular Stones scribes Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. While his exact amount of input is unknown, Taylor's contribution of the song's opening slide riff is considered the main reason he was given the credit, as it drives the song. The song itself is a low and lumbering blues number, with Bill Janovitz saying in his review, "the instrumental arrangement clearly aims for the Chess Studios approach." Notable is Jagger's double tracked lead vocal, double tracking being a rarely used studio device. Janovitz concludes, "Jagger takes the Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf inspiration of the song's origins and does his best to betray the fact that he is a skinny middle-class English kid, convincingly delivering the time-bomb lyric with appropriate swagger..."

On pianist Nicky Hopkins notable contribution, Janovitz says, " a rhythmically complex piano part on the verses, weaving in and out of the swooping guitar lick on the first verse and then building as the arrangement continues, playing nervous, jittery right-handed upper-register trills. The pianist creates scary tension on an already claustrophobic and malevolent-sounding song." The song is noted for its rising and falling chord progression, puncutated by the saxophone of Bobby Keys and the trumpet and trombone of Jim Price. Keeping beat is Charlie Watts on drums and Bill Wyman on bass who, although frequently absent during the recording sessions for Exile, made it on this occasion. Richards performs electric guitar as well as a low, echoing, strummed acoustic that shadows Taylor's running main riff. On top of that riff Taylor plays one of his famous outro solos over Jagger's lingering question to the listener;

The song then begins a slow fade-in to the following track, "I Just Want to See His Face".