The Rolling Stones are on tour right now and are making some last minute changes to the setlists.
After more than five decades The Stones are pulling their hit song “Brown Sugar” from rotation after a Chicago Tribune article called out the themes of “slavery, rape, torture and pedophilia” heard in “Brown Sugar,” in a plea for it to be pulled from the airwaves.
Mick doesn’t seem to see it that way.
“You picked up on that, huh?” Richards, 77, told the LA Times when asked why they nixed the track. “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is. Didn’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery? But they’re trying to bury it.”
In the song, recorded 1969, the rockers sing, “Gold coast slave ship bound for cotton fields/Sold in the market down in New Orleans /Scarred old slaver knows he’s doing alright/Hear him whip the women just around midnight/Brown sugar, how come you taste so good?”
“At the moment I don’t want to get into conflicts with all of this s—,” Richards explained. “But I’m hoping that we’ll be able to resurrect the babe in her glory somewhere along the track.”