Empty Heart

12 x 5
Side 1, Track 3
"Empty Heart" (Nanker Phelge) – 2:37




The first song so far that I'd never heard before. It really is nice after all the crappy blues tunes to hear a fairly straight-ahead rock and roll number, even one as generic as this. There's not much going on here – just a steady ride cymbal, some off-time tambourine (thanks, Mick!), and Keith's great guitar sound. According to this site the track was recroded at Chess Studios in Chicago.

Nanker Phelge once again makes its appearance as a writing credit, and it's easy to see why – the song is essentially a jam, with a simple 2-bar chord pattern that repeats without any changes. Mick's meandering vocal can hardly be called a "melody", a word that suggests some sort of compositional effort.

Not to bad-mouth the track – it has a nice groove, and the vocals, for all their sloppiness, hardly intrude at all. This is the type of song that would be playing in the background of a sixties cop movie, when the detectives visit a club looking for information, only to be shined on by the hipsters inside. It has that informal, unobtrusive groove.