The Goats Head Soup musicians are not who most people assume. I mapped the 1973 Rolling Stones album track by track, every player drawn as a line running through the songs they actually played on, and the first thing the finished diagram tells you is that Charlie Watts is the only person on all ten tracks. Not Jagger. Not Richards.
This is the only album map I make. The rest of my catalogue works the other way round: albums as stations, musicians as lines across a whole career. Here the ten tracks are the stations, in running order from "Dancing with Mr. D." through "Angie" to "Star Star", and the lines run between songs rather than records.
A discography map tells you who was in the room for an album. An album map tells you who was in the room for a song, which turns out to be a much stranger picture.
The Goats Head Soup Musicians, Track by Track
Ten tracks, and sixteen credited musicians across them. Here is the running order with the count of credited players on each.
| # | Track | Credited musicians |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Dancing with Mr. D. | 7 |
| 2 | 100 Years Ago | 5 |
| 3 | Coming Down Again | 7 |
| 4 | Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) | 9 |
| 5 | Angie | 7 |
| 6 | Silver Train | 5 |
| 7 | Hide Your Love | 5 |
| 8 | Winter | 6 |
| 9 | Can You Hear the Music | 9 |
| 10 | Star Star | 7 |
Drawn out, that produces a diagram with two dense stations and three very thin ones, which is not a shape you would guess from listening to the record.
Charlie Watts Is the Only Line That Runs the Full Width
Watts plays drums on all ten tracks and nobody else on the album manages it. Mick Jagger sings lead on nine. Keith Richards appears on seven. Mick Taylor appears on nine. Bill Wyman appears on three.
On a transit diagram, you get one straight line running the full width of the sheet, with everything else stopping and starting around it. It is the clearest argument I have seen, in data rather than opinion, for Watts being the thing the band was actually built on.
Keith Richards Does Not Play on Winter
This is the credit that made me check the sleeve three times. "Winter", track eight and one of the record's best songs, carries no Keith Richards at all. Not electric guitar, not bass, not acoustic, not a backing vocal.
What is on it, instead, is Mick Taylor on electric guitar, Bill Wyman on bass, Charlie Watts on drums, Nicky Hopkins on piano, a Nicky Harrison string arrangement, and Mick Jagger on lead vocals and electric guitar. Six musicians, and the band's rhythm guitarist is not one of them.
On the map, his line simply breaks and resumes at the next station. A sleeve note buries that. A diagram cannot.
Three People Play the Bass, and the Bass Player Is Not the Main One
The bass on this record is shared out in a way that still surprises people who have owned it for fifty years.
Keith Richards plays bass on four tracks: "100 Years Ago", "Heartbreaker", "Silver Train" and "Hide Your Love". Mick Taylor plays bass on three: "Dancing with Mr. D.", "Coming Down Again" and "Can You Hear the Music". Bill Wyman, the band's bass player, plays bass on three: "Angie", "Winter" and "Star Star".
So the two guitarists cover seven of the ten between them. Drawn as lines, Wyman's is one of the shortest on the sheet, which is the single most counterintuitive thing the map shows.
Angie Has No Electric Guitar on It
The band's biggest hit from the album is also its most stripped-down station. "Angie" carries Keith Richards and Mick Taylor both on acoustic guitar, Bill Wyman on bass, Charlie Watts on drums, Nicky Hopkins on piano, a Nicky Harrison string arrangement and Jagger's vocal.
No electric guitar anywhere on it, from a band whose entire identity is two electric guitars. Seven musicians and not one of them plugged in.
Heartbreaker and Can You Hear the Music Are the Two Busiest
Both carry nine credited musicians, and they get there by completely different routes.
"Heartbreaker" is the horn record: Billy Preston on clavinet and piano, Bobby Keys on tenor saxophone, Jim Horn on alto, Chuck Findley on trumpet, and a Jim Price horn arrangement over the top of the band.
"Can You Hear the Music" is the percussion record: Anthony "Rebop" Kwaku Baah and Pascal, credited on the sleeve as Nicholas Pascal Raicevic, plus the producer Jimmy Miller himself on percussion, with Jim Horn switching to flute. Three percussionists on one track, none of them Charlie Watts, who is on the drums underneath it all.
Three Pianists, and a Jagger You Do Not Expect
Piano is the other role that gets passed around. Nicky Hopkins plays on five tracks, Ian Stewart on two, and Billy Preston on one, with a clavinet on two more.
Jagger is the other surprise in the instrument credits. He plays electric guitar on "Silver Train" and "Winter", harmonica on "Silver Train" and piano on "Hide Your Love". Keith Richards, meanwhile, takes the lead vocal on "Coming Down Again", the one track on the album Jagger does not front.
Mick Taylor plays electric guitar on eight of the ten tracks, two more than Richards. This was his penultimate album with the band before he left in 1974, and the map is a reasonable place to start if you want to understand why his departure mattered as much as it did.
Sizes and Framing
The Goats Head Soup album map is a museum-quality Giclée on 230gsm acid-free matte fine art paper, landscape, in A2 (420 x 594mm, 23 x 16in) and A1 (594 x 841mm, 33 x 23in), plus 24 x 18in and 36 x 24in for US buyers. Supplied unframed or ready to hang in a black wood frame. Prices start at £42.
Track level detail means a lot of closely spaced labels, so I would point most people to A1 if the wall allows it.
Goats Head Soup Album Tube Map
Ten tracks as stations, sixteen credited musicians as named lines, roles shown per track. A2 and A1, from £42.
Explore This Art Print.Related Music Maps
For the career rather than the single record, the Rolling Stones discography map charts every studio album with the musicians running across the whole run, and I have written about how that one came together in the Rolling Stones discography map post.
Billy Preston and Nicky Hopkins both turn up again on the George Harrison map, which is the closest thing in the range to a companion piece. The rest are in my music map collection.
Questions About the Goats Head Soup Album Map
Who plays on every track of Goats Head Soup?
Charlie Watts, on drums. He is the only musician credited on all ten tracks. Mick Jagger sings lead on nine, Mick Taylor appears on nine, Keith Richards on seven and Bill Wyman on three.
Does Bill Wyman play bass on all of Goats Head Soup?
No. He plays bass on three tracks: "Angie", "Winter" and "Star Star". Keith Richards covers bass on four, and Mick Taylor on three.
Which Goats Head Soup track has the most musicians?
"Heartbreaker" and "Can You Hear the Music" are both credited to nine musicians, one built on a horn section and the other on three percussionists.
Who sings lead on Coming Down Again?
Keith Richards. It is the only track on the album where Mick Jagger does not take the lead vocal.
What is not on this map?
It covers the ten tracks of the original 1973 album only. Bonus tracks from later reissues, the 2020 deluxe edition extras, singles and outtakes are all off it. Engineering and sleeve credits are not drawn as lines either, so Andy Johns, who engineered and mixed it, and David Bailey, who shot the sleeve, are not on the diagram. Producers appear only where they are credited for playing something, which is why Jimmy Miller has a line, and most producers do not.
How is this different from the Rolling Stones discography map?
The discography map plots the whole career, album by album, and shows who played on each record. This one plots one album, track by track, and shows what each musician played on each song. It is the only map in my catalogue that goes down to track level.
The sleeve of this record does not tell you any of the above, which is the reason I drew it. You can see the Goats Head Soup album map here, and if you are buying for someone whose favourite record you would rather not guess at, there is a gift card.
