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‘Brown Sugar’: Rolling Stones Release Alternate Recording Featuring Eric Clapton

By Dustin Wicksell
Published on: 11:09 PST, Jun 2, 2015

The Rolling Stones have unveiled a long-lost super collaboration, an alternate recording of “Brown Sugar” that features no less than Eric Clapton on slide guitar.

The alternate version of “Brown Sugar” was recorded in 1970, according to JamBase. The Rolling Stones actually recorded the song multiple times; the version of Brown Sugar that appears on their iconic 1971 Sticky Fingers album was tracked in 1969 at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The version that is now seeing release was reportedly put to tape in December of 1970, when the Stones was recording at Olympic Studios in England. As VH1 points out, the version with Clapton on slide guitar was recorded as part of an impromptu performance, which took place during a birthday party held for guitarist Keith Richards.

Though it didn’t make the final cut of the album, the version of “Brown Sugar” with Eric Clapton on guitar has long been bootlegged by Rolling Stones fans. The track will finally see an official release next week, as the band re-releases Sticky Fingers in a variety of formats, featuring a wealth of previously unreleased material.

As Entertainment Weekly points out, the Stones have previously debuted an acoustic version of “Wild Horses,” as well as an alternate take on “Dead Flowers,” to help promote the album. The Rolling Stones are currently on tour, and in order to celebrate the album’s re-release, they also performed “Hang On Sloopy” during an Ohio show this weekend, the first time in over 40 years that they have done so.

Last month, Clapton posted an emotional video online, addressing the death of his friend and mentor B.B. King. As the Inquisitr previously reported, Clapton called King “a beacon for all of us,” noting the influence that the elder musician wielded in the Blues genre. Clapton had performed numerous times with King and collaborated with him on the album Riding With The King in 2000.

The alternate version features not only Clapton on guitar, but also keyboardist Al Kooper sitting in for Ian Stewart. This take on “Brown Sugar” is also notable in that it represents one of the few times that Clapton played guitar alongside Mick Taylor, who had previously appeared with John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, one of the bands that catapulted Clapton to fame in the 1960s.

[Photo by Fiona Goodall / Getty Images]

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