Goin' Home (Rolling Stones song)


"Goin' Home" is a song by rock band The Rolling Stones featured on their 1966 album Aftermath. At 11 minutes and 35 seconds, it was the longest popular music song at the time and the first extended rock improvisation released by a major recording act.

Writing and recording

Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Goin' Home" is a long blues-inspired track that is notable as one of the first songs by a rock and roll band to break the ten-minute mark and the longest recorded song on any Stones album. While many bands had experimented with length in live performances, and Bob Dylan had written many songs by this point which reached the five/six-minute mark, "Goin' Home" was the first "jam" recorded expressly for an album. In an interview with the magazine Rolling Stone, Richards said:
Jack Nitzsche, a regular Stones contributor throughout the 1960s, here performs percussion.
The song, while lengthy, is built around a common theme, as opposed to later Stones songs of great length like "Midnight Rambler" or "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" which are divided into distinct sections punctuated by differing instrumentations. "Goin' Home" plays as a long jam, eventually deconstructing Richards' guitar piece, Jagger's lyrics, and Watts' drum lines which build in power as the song progresses. Jagger's lyrics are called "a basic expression of pining for his girl and determining to go home and get him some. It's the bumpety-bump, ascending chorus of announcing his intentions to go home that's the most 'pop' element of the song."

Legacy

According to the music historian Nicholas Schaffner, at 11 minutes and 35 seconds, "Goin' Home" displaced the 1965 Bob Dylan song "Desolation Row" as the longest recording in popular music. He also cites it as "the first extended improvisation released by a major rock group — though by no means the last."
"Goin' Home" can be heard in the happening sequence of 1967 film Col cuore in gola.

Personnel