Brown Sugar by The Rolling Stones | electric
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An electric guitar lesson on how to play "Brown Sugar" by the Rolling Stones from their album "Sticky Fingers" released in 1971.
Along with, "You Gotta Move" and "Wild Horses", it was recorded over a three day period at Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama in December of 1969. Here's a really interesting article from Prosoundweb that discusses how the song was recorded. One of the things I learned in that article was that although almost everyone thinks Keith played this on a Telecaster, he actually used a Gibson SG. Anyways, this has always been one of my favorite Stones "rock & roll" songs. It's a great example of what Keith refers to as "the weave" or the way the guitar parts work together. Although some parts are planned out, most of it is just intuitive as Keith and Mick or Keith and Ron Wood these days play off of each other. Nobody does this better than the Stones! I'm sure that every time they play this song it's going to be a bit different but my goal in this lesson is to show you as close as I can the two guitar parts from the original recording.
There are a ton of variations, mostly in the verses and the ending but the choruses are pretty well the same every time. Both guitars are in open G tuning and there's an acoustic that vamps through the changes that's also in open G. In my demo, I skipped the 2nd verse and the sax solo and went straight to the third verse and into the ending but I go over both of those in the lesson. This tune is like a master class in how to play good rhythm guitar and by learning all of the different variations it really gives you a great insight into how those guys think. While it's always a good idea to try to learn the parts as they were played, with the Stones the biggest takeaway is that it's more about the groove and the feel than it is about playing the exact part. That's always been the attraction of the Stones and still is today and is IMHO the reason they've been so successful for so long. It's all about the feel... I had a fantastic time learning the parts and recording these videos. I hope you're able to get something from them. Cheers Andy |
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