After its original release in 1970, it was included on Rolling Stones compilations, such as Singles Collection: The London Years as a track credited to the Jagger/Richards songwriting partnership.

The track was reviewed as Jagger: ...puts on his best drawling speak-sing voice for the lyrics, spinning bizarre mini-snapshots of decadent, cruel gangster behavior...

The music isn't grim, though; it's more in a sly, ironic happy-go-lucky vein, as if to illustrate the callous, carefree glee gangsters take in such antics.

It's not a celebration of the gangster mentality, though, so much as a subtle, mocking look at its decadence, with hints of repressed homosexuality and almost gruesome imagery of dog-eat-dog behavior.

Burroughs and writer Robert Palmer assume this connection in a 1972 Rolling Stone magazine interview, and strong Burroughsian themes are contained in the film.

Martin Scorsese used the track—the solo version by Mick Jagger, incorrectly credited as the Rolling Stones version—in a scene from Goodfellas where Ray Liotta's character Henry Hill is driving to the hospital to pick up his brother after unsuccessfully trying to sell some pistol silencers to Jimmy Conway.