I’m a lyrics guy. With one notable exception, I know them. I remember them. The exception is: “Tumbling Dice” by the Rolling Stones.

      However, I’m also a guy who can’t carry a tune.

      Which sucks. I know—except for “Tumbling Dice”—all the words but can’t sing them.

      Karaoke is, of course, out of the question. Joining in when everybody is feeling “Yellow Submarine” is also out of the question, even though I know it’s: “And he told us of his life in the land of submarines.”
      And on those increasingly rare occasions when I might find myself in the midst of a singalong, I’ll manage to position myself next to a fellow or gal who can sing, so I can prompt him or her with the words: “…But then I spent so many nights thinking.” Pause. “How you did me wrong.” Pause. “And I grew strong.”

      Not sure whether this is related, but my head has a built-in internal jukebox constantly, though often not consciously, playing a familiar song. I’ve learned that this is not entirely uncommon. Now, I’m sure an outside listener, were it possible for there to be one, would quickly realize that the tunes are botched on all the songs that are playing in my head. But fortunately, there is no outside listener. And the lyrics, I can state with confidence, are all spot on.

      However, there was that one exception to my mastery of lyrics: I did not know the words to one of my all-time favorite songs. “Tumbling Dice,” by the Rolling Stones.

      I knew it uses metaphors from gambling on dice to say something about sex and romance. But outside of “I’m a lone crap shooter,” “You’ve got to roll me” and “They call me the tumbling di-i-ice,” I-I-I, lyrics guy extraordinaire, did not have a clue-clue-clue to what the song is saying about those subjects. Is it something about always being “in a hurry” and “never” having “to worry”?

      My inability to discern the lyrics resulted in a significant reduction in this song’s appearances in my internal rotation. There is a limit to how many times you can sing in your head, “You’ve got to roll me.” Linda Ronstadt did a version, in which, aware that the song’s lyrics had been difficult to discern, she made a conscious effort to enunciate. But her version, too, sounded mostly like gibberish to me.

      “I don’t think it has good lyrics,” Mick Jagger was once quoted as saying about “Tumbling Dice,” although he apparently wrote most of the lyrics. (Keith Richards gets credit for the music as well as for the lengthy effort needed to get the track right.) Jagger’s apparent disdain may explain why the lyrics to “Tumbling Dice” seem to have been buried in the record’s mix. Nonetheless, the song remains the fourth most played song in Stones concerts.

      So what are the lyrics?

      Being an immigrant from another century, and therefore a bit slow to make use of the wealth of information available in this century, I persisted in my ignorance until…today.

      For it turns out—duh!—the full answer was there for the learning. In a Substack essay, Ted Gioia mentions the unintelligibility of “Tumbling Dice,” but then provides a link to the Rosetta Stone: a video made available by the Rolling Stones themselves: “Tumbling Dice [Official Lyric Video].”

      And—thank you Internet!—everything has now become clear.

      The song, it turns out, does include a few weak lines after the introductory “mmm yeah” and “woo woo.” For example: “Cause all you women are low down gamblers, cheating like I don’t know how.” And later the even less memorable: “Baby, got no flavor. Fever in the funk house now.” (Ronstadt sings, “Baby, I go crazy”—an improvement. “Fever in the funk house now.”)

      But the lyrics get better. “This low-down bitchin’ got my poor feet a-itchin’”—a not atypical Jagger complaint, but a fun couplet, even if not on the level with, say, “Your old man took her diamonds and tiaras by the score/Now she gets her kicks in Stepney not in Knightsbridge anymore.”

     Then the “Tumbling Dice” singer gets to explaining—and this qualifies as a variation on the typical Stones-song persona—that he does not need merely to accumulate more romantic conquests: “Don’t need more jewels in my crown.”

      The song’s main conceit—that the singer is himself the “tumbling dice”—is certainly fun. Hence: “You got to roll me.”

      So the mysterious lyrics prove to be…okay. One doesn’t want to demand too much of song lyrics. Mick is not Cole Porter, though he is quite good. Keith, who apparently deserves much of the credit for “Wild Horses” and “Gimme Shelter,” is no slouch as a lyricist either.

      And now I’ll have a fuller version of “Tumbling Dice” to play in my head.