Love in Vain by The Rolling Stones Lesson

Learn to play Love in Vain by The Rolling Stones on JustinGuitar!


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This is Robert Johnson’s best and easily most emotionally mature and complex song, in my opinion.
The lyric has a voice that isn’t found anywhere else in his writing.
So much so, that I do wonder if it was written by another hand.

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Justin does this really well, love the song!

The stones? meh. I just dont get on with Micks singing, rather have Justin.

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I’ve got you @JustinGuitar! To play it close to the record, you have to play in standard tuning, but yes put the capo on the first fret, so it’s in Ab. You do a walk down starting on double stops from frets 10 and 12 on the high E and B strings (relative to the capo) and then switch to pinky on the third fret of the high E relative to the capo and walk down from the third fret on the D string until open before landing on a D7. The verses, he seems to always have a pinky on the third fret relative, but you play G for one bar, then G7 for three with some slides or fill stuff. C for two bars with your pinky on the high E, Then back to G for two bars, but here is where it gets interesting. He throws in a D7 (the secondary dominant) for a hot second in these two bars. Then for the turn-around he does a II-V-I-V (A7, D7, G, D7-relative to the capo) instead of the V-IV-I-V (D7, C7, G7, D7) you would expect.

Some people also play this song in open G tuning, which is fun if you want to bust your slide out, but I think Robert played it in standard either with a capo or out-of-tune guitar or they also could have raised the pitch slightly bc of the recording technology at the time often did that

Justin’s voice on point :heart_eyes: sooo good!!