Released as a standalone single on July 4, 1969, Honky Tonk Women went to No.1 in seven countries. You need a 'dirty edge' to a basic clean sound rather than a fully distorted sound. I played the country kind of influence on the rock licks between the verses. This (perhaps unspoken) prediction proved more than correct. Turn up your mid and treble settings and use your bridge pickup, with your tone knob fully up at 10. Use light distortion or overdrive, just enough to punch through the rhythm guitar, but not to dominate the song. Don't go mad with the distortion for the lead sound. The E pentatonic minor scale pattern is mainly used along with plenty of bends and sustain. It's not really a solo, but more of a harmony line, playing off the melody with Mick Jagger as he sings out to the end of the song.Īll the lead licks here are very country-blues. Starting with its famous cowbell line, 'Honky Tonk Women' is easily one of the best and most iconic Stones songs, as it perfectly creates a country bar feel in Tennessee and Mississippi: ' I met a gin soaked, bar-room queen in Memphis, She tired to take me. Harmony - Soon after Fill 4 the lead guitar plays on through to the end of the song. Our next song, 'Honky Tonk Women,' was also banned in China when The Stones toured there in 2006, as well as from numerous radio stations. This fill appears just before the second chorus.įill 4 - This appears shortly afterwards, during the second chorus. We'll look at them here:įill 1 - This comes in just before the first chorus.įill 2 - This comes not long after the first fill, during the chorus.įill 3 - There is a large gap before this fill comes in (while the verse is sung). The lead guitar plays a lot of fills (short melodic licks) throughout the song. You can use fingerpicking to pick out the lead parts, but a pick is easier. However if you would like to know what the 3rd guitar gets up to then click here. We've taken out the 3rd guitar in this audio to avoid confusion. It is just there to add an extra layer of melody, and you don't need to know it. There is also a third guitar which we look at separately.
Although the main rhythm guitar is in open G tuning, the lead guitar uses standard tuning: