It’s easy to tell a Rolling Stones song is playing from the first few seconds it blares out of the speakers. While the band may have prided themselves on taking their audience on various twists and turns throughout their career, there are always those handful of moments that stick out as quintessentially Stones, from Keith Richards playing his signature open-string guitar to Mick Jagger’s booming voice. Even though the band could make a lot of different sounds together, Richards considered one song to be the antithesis of what they stood for.
Then again, the band already had a specific identity before becoming superstars. From the beginning of their career, the band were looked at as the nastier side of the British Invasion, giving acts like The Beatles a run for their money by playing songs that were decidedly more menacing, like ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’ and ‘Satisfaction’.
For all of the great music they could write on their own, though, Richards and Jagger had no inclination to become songwriters at first. Being descendants of the blues rockers that came before them, Brian Jones had a vision for the band as blues missionaries, resurrecting songs by the likes of John Lee Hooker and Robert Johnson and interpreting them for a new generation.
Although the band got by in the London clubs playing that kind of music, manager Andrew Loog Oldham knew there was money to be made with their copyrighted work. While the band would pen original instrumentals under the pseudonym Nanker Pheldge, it wouldn’t be until their manager gave Richards and Jagger an ultimatum that they became songwriters.
Locking them away in a room and not letting them out until they wrote a song, Jagger and Richards delivered some of their first gems, only for them to be sold to other artists to sing. While Richards admitted to woodshedding most of their tracks in the early days, he believed one of their first compositions didn’t have the kind of grit that he would expect out of a Stones classic.
Working on a ballad for Marianne Faithfull, Jagger came up with the lyrics to ‘As Tears Go By’, painting the picture of a jaded old woman sitting and watching the children play and pining for her youth. While the band would cut their own version of the tune, Richards was not that enamoured with what it meant for their image.
Discussing the writing of the song, Richards thought that the band wasn’t the right fit for the tune, saying, “Suddenly, ‘Oh, we’re songwriters,’ with the most totally anti-Stones sort of song you could think of at the time, while we’re trying to make a good version of (Muddy Waters’) ‘Still A Fool.’ When you start writing, it doesn’t matter where the first one comes from. You’ve got to start somewhere, right?”.
While Richards may have considered the song a bit lightweight, it would be the precursor of many classics to come, leading to the band making straight-ahead rock and roll on songs like ‘Paint It Black’ as well as finding time to make more introspective ballads like ‘Wild Horses’. Richards may not have wanted to be seen with this song, but it was all about developing their craft along the way.
