The Rolling Stones had been knocking around Britain in the early 60s building their reputation as a Chicago blues cover band extraordinaire. The evidence of this legacy can be found on their early albums, full of covers of legendary American blues artists.
Keith Richards, in his autobiography “Life” says the Stones actually helped America rediscover its own music.
But there reached a point where then-manager Andrew Loog Oldham realized if the Stones weren’t able to write their own songs they simply wouldn’t be able to sustain their popularity. So, as legend has it, and Richards relives in his book, Oldham locked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in a kitchen and refused to let them out until they’d written a song. It wasn’t an easy birth but nevertheless The Glimmer Twins were born.
As Richards writes:
“We spent the whole night in that goddamn kitchen, and I mean, we’re the Rolling Stones, like the blues kings, and we’ve got some food, piss out the window or down the sink, it’s no big deal. And I said, ‘If we want to get out of here, Mick, we better come up with something.’”
What they came up with was As Tears Go By. But they didn’t think of it as a Stones song and they gave it to 17 year-old Marianne Faithfull who took it to #9 on the British charts.
Following the success of Faithfull’s interpretation, the Stones recorded their own version as part of the album December’s Children (And Everybody’s) a year later. That version peaked at #6.
It was one of three songs the Stones performed on their third appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show…
