Rolling Stones fans don’t need to check the credits to know that “Little T&A” is primarily a Keith Richards song. You can hear him in every part of it—the dirty guitar riff, the casual swagger and the feeling that the entire performance might collapse but never does.
It appears on 1981’s Tattoo You, although Keith began working on it during the sessions that produced Emotional Rescue. That timing makes sense to me because I was probably suffering from Rolling Stones burnout by then.
Right out of high school, I worked for several years in a book bindery to earn money for college. The machinery rumbled all day, and it seemed as though something from Emotional Rescue was always blasting from the radio loudly enough to compete with it.
By the time Tattoo You arrived, I was in college and listening mostly to punk and new wave. The Rolling Stones suddenly seemed connected to the world I had just left rather than the one I was discovering. As a result, it took me quite a while to give “Little T&A” a proper listen.
I eventually discovered that it is a great, uncomplicated rock-and-roll song. Keith’s guitar has a little rockabilly snap, Charlie Watts keeps everything grounded, and Mick contributes backing vocals without taking over the performance.
Leaving the lead vocal to Keith was exactly right. Mick could have sung it more cleanly and probably more forcefully, but that would have missed the point. Keith’s battered, half-spoken delivery makes the song sound lived-in. He doesn’t perform its disreputable swagger; he embodies it.
“Little T&A” is not profound, sophisticated or particularly respectable.
It is, however, completely and unmistakably rock and roll.