In October 1974, the Rolling Stones recorded "Scarlet" with their friends Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin on guitar and Traffic's Ric Grech playing bass. The band finally gave the track an official release today as a teaser for their forthcoming Goat's Head Soup box set that contains a slew of bonus material including two other unreleased songs, demos, alternate versions, and a live gig.
Of "Scarlet," Keith Richards says, "My recollection is we walked in at the end of a Zeppelin session. They were just leaving, and we were booked in next and I believe that Jimmy decided to stay. We weren't actually cutting it as a track, it was basically for a demo, a demonstration, you know, just to get the feel of it, but it came out well, with a line up like that, you know, we better use it.''
And from Rolling Stone:
In 1975, Page told Rolling Stone's Cameron Crowe that he thought the track was supposed to be a Stones B-side. "It sounded very similar in style and mood to those Blonde on Blonde tracks," Page said. "It was great; really good. We stayed up all night and went down to Island Studios where Keith put some reggae guitars over one section. I just put some solos on it, but it was eight in the morning of the next day before I did that. He took the tapes to Switzerland and someone found out about them. Keith told people that it was a track from my album."
