Watch the Rolling Stones Play ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg’ for First Time Since 2007
The Rolling Stones played Detroit’s Ford Field on Monday night, and they honored the city’s musical roots by covering the 1966 Temptations classic “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”
“Ever since we were really young, we always loved Motown,” Mick Jagger told the audience. “We can’t come to Detroit and not do a Motown number, right?”
It was the first time they’d played the song since a 2007 gig at London’s 02 Arena, but they’ve done it at least 110 times going all the way back to the Made in the Shade tour of 1975. It’s one of four Temptations songs in their live repertoire, along with “I Can’t Get Next to You,” “Don’t Look Back,” and “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me).” The latter song was recorded for Some Girls in 1978 and they’ve played it at least 134 times in concert, most recently at Detroit’s Comerica Park in 2015.
The Stones next gig will take place in Austin, Texas, at the Circuit of the America F1 race track on November 20th. The tour wraps up three days later at the Hard Rock Live Casino in Hollywood, Florida. The show has been largely centered around their hits, but they’ve also found space for lesser-known tunes like “Rock Off, “19th Nervous Breakdown,” “Connection,” “Sad Sad Sad,” “Monkey Man,” “All Down the Line,” and “Fool to Cry.”
One song they haven’t done is “Brown Sugar.” The 1971 hit was a part of nearly every show they’ve done over the past 50 years, but the Stones decided to at least temporarily retire it due to its controversial lyrics about slavery. “I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is,” Keith Richards told the L.A. Times. “Didn’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery? But they’re trying to bury it.”
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There’s no official word about Stones activity after the tour finale in Florida, but there are rumors about a 60th-anniversary tour of Europe in 2022. They’ve also been working on their first collection of new songs since 2005’s A Bigger Bang for the past several years. The late Charlie Watts is on those recordings, meaning fans will have one more chance to hear his work should the band ever get around to finishing the album.
