Happy

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Villa Nelcotte, Southern France 1971

"Well I never kept a dollar past sunset,
It always burned a hole in my pants.
Never made a school mama happy,
Never blew the second chance, oh no, I need a love to keep me happy." 

Would you be happy if you were far away from the comforts of home? Exiled to another country, for tax reasons?  Learning to be a parent? Dealing with budding addictions?  Feeling the pressure to produce and collaborate?  You may, or you may not, according to research by those who know best. 

But I digress...

Keith Richards wrote and recorded the song "Happy" from his basement in southern France, where, along with the rest of the Rolling Stones, he was exiled from his native England during the summer of 1971.*  Appropriately, this is where much of Exile on Main Street was written and recorded. 

According to New York Times music critic Ben Ratliff, the album is "a wise horror show, an audio diary of rock stars finally facing the rigors of marriage, children and addiction."

The song "Happy" features the open, five-string tuning Richards invented.  You hear it in "Honky Tonk Women," assuredly in the opening riffs of "Satisfaction," "Jumping Jack Flash," and many others.  You hear it in all manner of music today, influenced by Richards and the Stones. 

The song was written in four hours while Richards waited for his mates to arrive for their recording sessions.  According to Richards in his book, Life, "I'd have been happier if more came like 'Happy.'"

Maybe.  Or Maybe not.

Listening to the Rolling Stones makes me happy these days.  It gets me thinking about happiness.  And sadness.  And how utterly useless these terms are.

What you think you know about happiness and sadness, and how you think life events will make you feel, is wrong.  This is the belief held and proven by Harvard Psychology Professor Daniel Gilbert.

Just as Richards stumbled upon the song Happy, Gilbert came upon studying happiness by happenstance.  Gilbert wanted to be a science fiction writer.  When a creative writing class was full, he enrolled in a psychology class.  He is now a renowned social psychologist.  

His work has led to him quantify that our ability to predict what will make us happy or sad is often incorrect.  Not just as it relates to eating a cheeseburger, buying a car or television, but even with bigger life events surrounding job losses, death, and having children, to name a few. 

I've yet to read Gilbert's book, Stumbling on Happiness, but an excellent overview of his work is available here.  It is a little dry, but worth reading if you've ever thought having a pool in your backyard would make you happy, only to seldom dip your toes in the water once it became reality.   


*Charlie Watts was living 130 miles away, above the Aix-en-Provence.  Mick Jagger spent much of his time in Paris.  Mick Taylor was the other guitarist at the time.  Ronnie Wood joined in 1976.