She’s So Cold

The Zoo Crew's been spinning "She's So Cold" off the Rolling Stones' Emotional Rescue album, and man, it still hits with that jagged, new wave-tinged rock edge that cut through the airwaves back when it dropped as the second single in September 1980. After the band followed up Some Girls by heading straight back into Compass Point Studios in the Bahamas and other spots like Pathé-Marconi in Paris, they cranked out a bunch of tracks that ended up split between Emotional Rescue and the next one, Tattoo You. The title track of Emotional Rescue went disco with Mick Jagger's falsetto and did big business on the charts, but a lot of the Zoo Freaks and old-school rock heads were ready for something with more bite, and "She's So Cold" delivered with Keith Richards' muted rhythm guitar locking in with Ron Wood's slide and pedal steel, Bill Wyman's bass, Charlie Watts driving the beat, and Bobby Keys adding that sax punch. Jagger and Richards wrote it, with Mick whipping up the lyrics in about an hour, going way over the top the way he likes for pure entertainment value. He's so hot for her, a bleeding volcano and burning bush, while she's cold like a tombstone, an ice cream cone, born in an Arctic zone, and when he touches her his hand freezes. It's pure Stones innuendo and frustration, classic Mick spitting out the lines with that knowing smirk in his voice.

There's a fun story around the title too. American rocker Willie Nile had been playing a song called "She's So Cold" since 1978 and put it out before the Stones' version. When a reporter from The Face magazine asked Jagger straight up if he'd nicked it, Mick shot back that he knew Willie, called him a right little stirrer, a sort of Latin kind of singer, and said no way it was true because Nile would be suing him if it was. Nile woke up to his phone ringing off the hook with DJs wanting his reaction, and when someone suggested he take legal action he laughed it off. No way was he going to be in that category of suing the Stones. He loved them, and if it influenced their song, fine. That attitude fits the whole vibe of the era. Jagger told Rolling Stone at the time that yeah, it's all a joke really, a lot of pastiche all over the album, their way of piss-taking. He has a limited attention span, loves making up songs but doesn't even like finishing the words sometimes, just wants to sing ooh all the way through and call it done. Charlie Watts later recalled that "She's So Cold" was a track Keith had going that he didn't even know what was happening on it, and being the drummer he never heard Mick's lyrics until after. Ron Wood remembered them all trashing over it, and Mick confirmed he wrote it in an hour. It was a bit like "Shattered" in that the music was always there waiting. Radio stations got a promo single with a cleaned-up version on one side because of the "goddamned cold" line, and the unedited version on the other. The single peaked at number 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 33 in the UK, and it even hit number 9 on the disco chart alongside a couple other tracks from the album. The video was pure early-eighties minimalism, pre-MTV, the band lip-syncing on a sparse soundstage looking like they spent about half an hour on it, Charlie in a neon green shirt managing a smile now and then, Keith in a leopard jacket. They played it live on the 1981 tour and it stuck around as one of those FM staples that still sounds sharp when the Zoo Crew drops the needle.

Listening to the Stones dig into that hot-and-cold push and pull makes you think about how those guys even got rolling in the first place. It all started with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, a couple of kids from Dartford who knew each other from grammar school but had drifted apart. They bumped into each other again at the Dartford train station in October 1961, Mick heading off to the London School of Economics and Keith to Sidcup Art College. Mick had a stack of blues and R&B records under his arm, and that got them talking. They realized they shared a mutual friend in guitarist Dick Taylor, and pretty soon the three were hanging out, listening to Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry, forming a little outfit called Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys. In April 1962 they checked out Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated at the Ealing Club and got blown away by the slide guitar work of this guy Brian Jones, who was going by Elmo Lewis after his hero Elmore James. Brian was already a blues fanatic who'd picked up piano, recorder, clarinet, and washboard young, and he was putting a band together. He drew the name from a Muddy Waters track called "Rollin' Stone," and on July 12, 1962, they played their first gig at the Marquee Club in London as the Rolling Stones, with Mick on vocals, Keith and Brian on guitars, Dick Taylor on bass, Ian Stewart on piano, and Mick Avory on drums. Charlie Watts would come in later as the permanent drummer, and Bill Wyman locked down the bass. They started out covering Chicago blues and R&B in the pubs and clubs around West London, a bunch of students and bohemians digging deep into that American sound. Spurred on by what the Beatles were doing, Jagger and Richards started writing their own material, which changed everything and put the Glimmer Twins in creative control. From those early days of shared records and cramped apartments in London, through the ups and downs and lineup shifts, they built the whole machine that could still turn out a track like "She's So Cold" nearly twenty years later, full of that same restless energy.

You can dig into all the stories, the setlists, the photos, and the fan talk over on the Rolling Stones official website, or catch the latest from the band on their Facebook, Instagram, and X accounts. Fans keep the conversation going at the It's Only Rock'n Roll fan club site, where people have been trading notes on Emotional Rescue and tracks like this one for years, and there's an active crew in the SHIDOOBEE with StonesDoug Facebook group swapping stories and memories. The Zoo Crew will keep spinning the deep cuts and the big ones alike right here on THE ZOO, so stick around with the Zoo Freaks and we'll keep the rock rolling.