For countless players around the globe, working with a band like the Rolling Stones is a dream gig. Canadian musician Ben Mink can now say he’s done exactly that, but he was none the wiser at the time.
In 1997, the Stones released Bridges to Babylon, the band’s second studio album since penning a big money deal with Virgin. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, credited as the Glimmer Twins, co-produced it with Don Was, The Dust Brothers, Rob Fraboni, and Danny Saber.
The slinking blues tune Anybody Seen My Baby? was chosen as the record’s lead single, but there was a small problem.
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“In 1997, while diapering my daughter, I got a call from my lawyer who told me to ‘sit down,’” Mink recalls. “Apparently, she had just gotten off the phone with the Stones’ manager and explained that they had a new album, single, and video coming out in a few days.”
The single would go on to become the band’s 38th Top-40 hit on home soil, and it scored even better in mainland Europe and in Canada, where it topped the charts. But before it could be released, the band had some loose ends to tie up.
“Apparently, Keith Richards’ daughter noticed the similarities between the two songs,” Mink continues, referencing k.d. lang’s 1992 hit, Constant Craving, which he had co-written. “Their legal reps did not want any difficulties, so they kindly suggested a co-authorship with k.d. and myself.”
No wonder he was told to put the diapers down and take a seat. It was an easy yes.
“I’d been a Rolling Stones fan since I was 13 and knew all of Keith Richards’ guitar solos,” he reveals. “For something like this to happen was beyond the beyond. As a kid, I used to joke that ‘one day they will cover one of our songs!’ Who knew? [laughs]
“They were very kind and gentlemanly about the whole event, and I’m deeply honored and still incredulous. What a thing to happen!”
It was the chorus melody, in particular, that was reminiscent of Constant Craving. But the song was nearly left on the cutting room floor.
“When we first recorded it, it turned out that it was in too low a key for k.d.’s voice, so it was almost abandoned,” Mink told the Guardian in 2017. “I stayed up late and reworked the guitars in a key that suited her. If I hadn’t stayed up, it might never have been finished.”
Lang was already “pissed off” with the song as it was, deriding its happy “poppy, celebratory, upbeat” nature in the face of the Ingénue album’s darker sounds. Mink not only saved the song from oblivion, but also provided a unique moment in the history of one of the world’s biggest bands.
Mink’s full interview with Guitar World will be published online in due course.
Meanwhile, Jagger has been talking up the value of his guitar chops in the band, even if Keef isn’t too happy about it.
