The 1970s File Feature
Ain't Too Proud To Beg
The Rolling Stones and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" The Rolling Stones have built a substantial portion of their recording catalog on cover versions of American …
01 The Story
The Rolling Stones and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"
The Rolling Stones have built a substantial portion of their recording catalog on cover versions of American rhythm and blues and soul music, and their 1974 cover of "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" is among the most celebrated of these interpretations. The original version of the song was recorded by The Temptations for Motown Records in 1966, written by Norman Whitfield and Eddie Holland and produced by Norman Whitfield. That original reached number thirteen on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of the definitive recordings of the Motown era, showcasing David Ruffin's passionate lead vocal against the group's elaborate five-part harmonies and the precision of the Motown house band known as the Funk Brothers.
The Rolling Stones recorded their version of "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" for inclusion on their 1974 album It's Only Rock 'n Roll, released on Rolling Stones Records (distributed by Atlantic Records in the United States). This album was the first major Rolling Stones record to be released on their own label after their departure from Decca Records in the United Kingdom and their previous arrangement with London Records in the United States, and it carried the additional significance of being one of the last albums to feature guitarist Mick Taylor, who left the band shortly after its recording. The album's title track was a deliberate statement of artistic identity, and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" served as a demonstration of the band's deep roots in American R&B that had been present since their formation.
The production of the Stones' cover was handled by the Glimmer Twins, the production alias for Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Their approach to the song stripped away the orchestral polish of the Motown original and rebuilt it on a foundation of guitar-driven rock energy. The result was a version that honored the emotional content of the original while transforming its sonic texture into something unmistakably Rolling Stones in character. Mick Taylor's guitar work contributed a fluidity that balanced the more aggressive rhythm guitar of Richards, creating a texture that was simultaneously rootsy and sophisticated.
Released as a single, the track debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on November 9, 1974, entering at number 64. The ascent was swift and consistent with the commercial momentum the band maintained throughout the mid-1970s. The single reached its peak position of number 17 on the Hot 100 during the chart week of December 14, 1974, spending ten weeks total on the chart. The performance confirmed that the Rolling Stones could successfully translate soul classics through their own rock aesthetic and achieve significant mainstream pop success in doing so, adding another strong entry to a decade that had already yielded hits such as "Tumbling Dice," "Angie," and "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)."
The choice of "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" was consistent with the Stones' longstanding practice of using cover versions to pay tribute to the Black American musical tradition that had so profoundly influenced them since their formation in London in 1962. Jagger had been a devoted student of American R&B and blues since his teenage years, and the band's early recordings were filled with covers of songs by artists such as Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, and various Motown and Chess Records acts. By 1974, choosing to cover a Temptations song was both a personal artistic statement and a public acknowledgment of musical debts that Jagger and Richards had always been candid about in interviews and that had shaped the Rolling Stones' sound in fundamental ways.
The 1975 Tour of the Americas, one of the most extensively documented tours of the Rolling Stones' career and one of the most spectacular live productions in rock history to that point, featured "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" as a reliable presence in the set list. The elaborate stage production designed by Ron Bergman and the theatrical scale of the tour exposed the song to enormous live audiences across North and South America, reinforcing its status as a legitimate entry in the band's own canon rather than merely a cover interlude between original compositions. This live endorsement was a significant factor in maintaining the song's cultural visibility in the years after its initial chart success.
02 Song Meaning
Pride, Vulnerability, and the Rolling Stones' Reading of "Ain't Too Proud to Beg"
"Ain't Too Proud to Beg" is a song about the willingness to abandon dignity in the service of emotional need. The title functions as both a confession and an assertion, simultaneously admitting vulnerability and framing that vulnerability as a conscious, even defiant choice. The narrator is not too proud to beg, which implicitly acknowledges that pride would ordinarily prevent such behavior. The song is therefore about the power of romantic attachment to overcome the ego's defenses and the way that genuine emotional need can dissolve the social performances through which people normally manage their self-presentation.
When The Temptations recorded the original in 1966 under Norman Whitfield's production, the song's emotional core was delivered primarily through David Ruffin's intensely personal vocal style, which communicated the narrator's desperation with raw, almost painful immediacy. When The Rolling Stones covered the song in 1974, they inherited that emotional template and reframed it within their own aesthetic, one built on rock-and-roll swagger and a certain irreverent masculinity. The result created an interesting tension: the song's lyric demands humility while the Rolling Stones' musical personality embodied confidence and defiance.
That tension, rather than undermining the song, actually enriches it in the Stones' version. Mick Jagger's vocal performance navigates between the cocky and the genuinely beseeching, suggesting a narrator who has not abandoned all self-possession even in the act of making his plea. This is a different emotional register from Ruffin's more overtly anguished reading, but it is equally valid as a portrayal of how pride and need can coexist uneasily in a person trying to hold a relationship together against the pressure of incipient dissolution.
The song also fits within a broader pattern in the Rolling Stones' career of using covers to explore emotional and cultural territories they found authentic to their own experience. The band's deep connection to American soul and R&B was not merely stylistic borrowing but reflected a genuine identification with the emotional directness and rhythmic vitality of that tradition. In covering "Ain't Too Proud to Beg," they were asserting a cultural lineage and claiming that the emotional content of the song was as available to them as to the original performers, a claim they made credibly through the quality and commitment of the performance itself.
The 1974 context of the recording adds further meaning. The Rolling Stones were navigating a transitional period in their own career, with Mick Taylor's imminent departure representing a significant change in their creative dynamic. A song about holding on to something precious in the face of potential loss resonated within that context, giving the cover a subterranean biographical dimension that attentive listeners could perceive beneath the high-energy rock performance on the surface. The song's message about refusing to let pride prevent an honest plea was, in its own way, a statement about the band's willingness to keep working and adapting regardless of internal changes or external pressures.
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