The Rolling Stones - UK Decca Singles poll 1963-1969

kinda inclined to go w Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow?, just cuz it's such a bizarre mix

Yeah, that one's always been a favourite of mine and love how overstuffed and ambitious it sounds - one of their most underrated singles, I think. Not sure whether to vote for it or not!

I love this era of the Stones - yeah, the albums weren't always great and the quality control is all over the place, but at their best they were great in this era... not to mention it's before Keith Richards found his signature style.

Voted for We Love You/Dandelion. Most of these songs are pretty amazing (Jumpin' Jack Flash, LSTNT combined with Ruby Tuesday, Paint It Black - all close runner-ups) but We Love You might just be my favourite thing the Stones have done (that, or She's A Rainbow).

I love the neat trick they used on that single where at the end of each side there's a really faint part of the other side for a couple of seconds. Some CD versions have retained it, but it only really makes sense on vinyl.

I wonder why there were no UK singles from Beggar's Banquet and Satanic Majesties.

Jumpin' Jack Flash

...wasn't on the UK (or US) Beggar's Banquet

It's Jumpin Jack Flash. Overplayed and run into the ground but when you get a little distance from it, what a record. Just meticulously put-together, amazing in every way.

xxp sorry kornrulez, I just realized your vote wasn't a response to my post

Let's Spend The Night Together is hot

It's cool how the "ba-ba-la-da" vocal part of Let's Spend the Night Together kind of comes back as the guitar riff in "Rocks Off"

Get Off My Cloud has always been my answer and not changing it now

I wonder why there were no UK singles from Beggar's Banquet and Satanic Majesties

There were no UK singles from any of their UK albums

(in the '60s)

finally a thread about the Rolling Stones

It's cool how the "ba-ba-la-da" vocal part of Let's Spend the Night Together kind of comes back as the guitar riff in "Rocks Off"

― Josefa, Friday, April 21, 2017 9:23 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Whoa, I never noticed the similarity before, but now that you've mentioned it I can totally hear it!

I love the quiet middle-eights-I-guess of Have You Seen Your Mother and Let's Spend the Night Together, especially "you know I'm smiling baby!" which really makes the song for me, somehow I don't find the verses that compelling but totally hooked by the time it's over.

I've been super into HYSYM lately bc it's still somewhat new to me, I kind of ignored it as the chaos gave me the impression it wasn't much of a song when I was younger and a fool. But it rules, those last few seconds of distorted drone...

The Last Time is zenith of early stones imo, perfect song.

'I Wanna Be Your Man' may very well be a lesser Lennon/McCartney composition but The Beatles never had guitars as stinging as those on the Stones version of that track, not even on 'Helter Skelter' or the fast version of 'Revolution' ...

Let's Spend the Night Together - I heard this for the first time in forever this week and man what a great performance/song/recording

"Have You Seen Your Mother..." is massive.

"Get Off of My Cloud" and the "Let's Spend The Night Together/Ruby Tuesday" twofer are probably the only pre-Beggars Banquet era Stones hits that aren't played out for me at this point.

That mono single mix of "Paint It Black" is great with the mix focused that way as the bass is more present and driving. Got to think that is the one that people heard on their AM radios back when the the tune was new.

I'd vote for "Play With Fire" if it were here but, as it is, it's between "Paint It, Black" and "Let's Spend the Night Together"/"Ruby Tuesday", leaning towards the former. I really like a lot of what they did in this period.

Huh, so "Tell Me" wasn't a UK single either.

jumpin' jack flash might be a top 10 song of all time

I never get sick of the proto-rave of "We Love You".

I think my heart says Last Time bcz goddamn

Little Red Rooster barely over Lets Spend The Night Together and Get Off Off My Cloud.

Let's Spend The Night Together/Ruby Tuesday

Flowers is my favorite Stones album

Oh, "Get Off of My Cloud" is on here! That's a contender too.

Voted for it, just because I'm most in the mood for it today.

19th nervous breakdown. Love the surf guitar sound at the end

how the heck has this never been polled??

Not Fade Away is the song that makes me think i'd have been obsessed with them if i'd been 16 in 64. i mean god damn.

Looking over the US singles discography, I'm surprised at some of the songs that were issued as singles in the US, some of them don't seem single-worthy at all.

Like, I'm not as down on 'In Another Land' as most, but it sure as hell wasn't a single!

"Honky Tonk Women"

I was thinking just now about the Stones' take on psychedelia - much of their '67 work gets compared to the work of The Beatles, particularly Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, but I think that the Stones' take on psychedelia was far darker. It was an odd collision of the "cup of tea and a splendid cream bun oh wow far out" UK psychedelia and the darker, American take on psychedelia that The Doors, Jefferson Airplane and Love traded in.

The Beatles didn't have anything like a '2,000 Light Years From Home' in 'em. The closest they got to "bad vibe" psychedelia was a song about George Harrison getting impatient because his friends got lost and he was knackered.

Well, remember that all of the Stones' psych stuff was recorded in the shadow of the Redlands bust, which certainly added dark color to the material.

Bill Wyman complained in his book that "In Another Land" was selling really well as a US single - credited to Bill Wyman (solo) - before the Stones sabotaged its success by releasing "She's a Rainbow" as a single about three weeks after it

Stones were pretty dark at the time. this was before Brian Jones's death. i was trying to find a story, about Kenneth Anger

Kenneth Anger believed that Anita Pallenberg and Brian Jones, who was to drown in mysterious circumstances in the swimming pool of his Sussex mansion, were witches. Allegedly, Jones showed the filmmaker an extra nipple he had on his inner thigh and told him: “In another time they would have burned me [as a witch].” Extra nipples were regarded by witch-hunters as a sign of the Devil’s Mark. A friend of Anita Pallenberg, Tony Sanchez, believed she kept her drug stash hidden in an old carved wooden chest in her flat. One day he looked inside. Instead of drugs he found it contained bones and pieces of fur and skin from “strange animals.” Mick Jagger’s one time girlfriend Marianne Faithfull described how she and Pallenberg used to sit for hours reading aloud passages from Robert Graves’ book The White Goddess and studying the ancient Celtic tree alphabet.

http://www.newdawnmagazine.com/articles/rocks-sympathy-for-the-devil

Satisfaction!

lol @ people so burnt out on boomer rock that they don't even notice how fucking incredible "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is

Jumpin' Jack Flash would probably get my vote for greatest song of all time. Either that or Like a Rolling Stone.

I like "Satisfaction"! It's just not my favourite of these.

'I wanna be your man' is still crazynuts..

It's cool how the "ba-ba-la-da" vocal part of Let's Spend the Night Together kind of comes back as the guitar riff in "Rocks Off"

which Turrican already said.

Thinking about voting for the one that came back to life as an Elvis Costello song.

19th, Jack Flash, Honky Tonk or Let's Spend The Night Together/Ruby Tuesday, cause that's gotta be one of the best double A's of all time.

i do like how weird and gothy Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In The Shadow? is. the horns can be a bit annoying but it gives it this Romantic European bull fight thing to it. i can see Robert Smith being a big fan of this song (Why Can't I See You?). "Tell me a story bout/how you adore me" is a fucking killer line. "Live the shadow/see the shadow" is also killer. who is this The Damned?

While I've never rated Charlie Watts as a drummer, I love the drum sound on 'Honky Tonk Women' ...

The have-nots would have tried to freeze you in ice

I agree that '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' is still great, even though I must have heard it hundreds of thousands of times by now.

i always associate honky tonk women with 3 am. i used to have a college radio show from 2-4am, and no one gave a shit except for one guy who would reliably call in and ask to hear the same stones song. after a while i learned to have it ready to play ahead of time.

Hehe! I wonder if he's still out there, regularly getting his 'Honky Tonk Women' fix at the same time every day.

Probably one way or another baby.

Generally in any poll where "Paint It Black" is an option that will be the choice.

This is no exception.

I was just having a look to see how this set of singles compares to their '70s singles and... christ, is this band's singles discography a mess! You'd think it would have become more straightforward post-Decca, but if anything it gets more messy singles-wise.

I think a few of those '70s singles are just Allen Klein trying to fuck with them and/or make a little extra dough.

Yeah, there's certainly a bit of that, but when operations shift to Rolling Stones Records and they start being responsible for their own stuff post-Decca, their singles discography still looks a bit confusing. It seems to me that in the UK they had a tendency to only release one single from an album, maybe two at a push, so there really wouldn't be many options to go for if the '70s UK singles were polled. It seems to me that, in the UK at least, they considered themselves to be more of an "albums" band in the '70s. However, when you look into other territories, there were so many songs that were released as singles and many of them classics, that you'd think that they'd put those singles out everywhere.

I'm trying to picture a situation where The Rolling Stones had done what The Beatles did after them and ended up with control of their '60s recordings. I think there'd be a lot better sounding versions of their albums out now, and they may have tidied the discography up a bit.

The Last Time is zenith of early stones imo, perfect song.

First song I thought of... which surprised me.

the history of that song is not pretty

"It's All Over Now" might be better though tbh

a middling cover imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGfM06QczLY

Well, that is better, of course.

the big contrast is how much the original swings! just bounces like a motherfucker

the history of that song is not pretty

― Οὖτις, Monday, April 24, 2017 5:45 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah. Stones nick traditional gospel song > Manager records orchestral version > Allen Klein ends up with rights to '60s Stones catalogue > The Verve sample a portion of the Oldham orchestral version > Allen Klein sues The Verve, the Stones get royalties for a song they didn't write.

Pretty sure this is the original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVhPvMcVYtk

xp

And let's not forget The Who released a single in '67: 'The Last Time' b/w 'Under My Thumb' in support of Jagger/Richards...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWf3O8EG75E

Years later, Bobby Womack said in an interview that he had told Sam Cooke he did not want the Rolling Stones to record their version of the song, and that he had told Mick Jagger to get his own song. Sam Cooke convinced him to let the Rolling Stones record the song. Six months later on after receiving the royalty check for the song he told Sam Cooke that Mick Jagger could have any song he wanted.

http://images.45cat.com/the-who-the-last-time-1967-4.jpg

Tarfumes I can't tell if yr youtube is an earlier version or if the one I posted is just a remaster or remix something? They sound v close - the vocal take sounds the same, for ex. Thought I was posting the Valentino's version.

The one I posted is the original Valentinos version; the one you posted sounds like a later ('80s?) re-recording (though it's ace).

yeah it sounds like someone's pasted some other tracks on top of the original and remixed it or something

i listened to a bunch of Stones on this rainy monday, when "Let's Spend the Night Together" got to the Beach Boys-style breakdown part, i knew that i had made the right choice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4QtUUp8mfc

^ Heh. I haven't watched it, but I have a feeling that's the photo session for the 'Have You Seen Your Mother...' sleeve.

Right now, "Let's Spend the Night Together" (with an extra nudge from its flip side). Other choices at other times.

I have a feeling that's the photo session for the 'Have You Seen Your Mother...' sleeve

yeah, it's basically the original promotional film they made for the song, i think. that drag photo session was used for the single sleeve outside the US.

Listening to 'Ruby Tuesday' again now, and I've always loved that they kept in Jagger's voice cracking on the word "from" ...

Y'know, it's such a shame that Keith Richards thinks a lot of the Stones' psychedelic stuff is "crap", although I have a feeling that might have something to do with unhappy memories of the time or maybe he was rattled by people saying they were trying to copy The Beatles. Not all of their psychedelic stuff works, granted, but when it's on the mark, like on '2,000 Light Years From Home', 'Citadel', 'Ruby Tuesday', 'We Love You', 'Dandelion', it's absolutely brilliant. They were better at psychedelia than they, and many others, thought they were. I've read that Andy Partridge from XTC really rates a lot of the Stones' psychedelic stuff.

You know I'm smilin' BABY!

it's such a shame that Keith Richards thinks a lot of the Stones' psychedelic stuff is "crap",

Keith has a lot of stupid opinions

i was reading up on "Have You Seen Your Mother Baby" and it sounds like Keith got burned on that one. they ended up bouncing it down so much for the trumpet overdubs and stuff that the rhythm section got completely buried. having A/B'd those track, i'd say he's right. as for people saying they copied the Beatles, i bet Brian Jones got the bulk of that, and he resented it. people drew a line from "Norwegian Wood" to his sitar on "Paint it Black" even though he'd been experimenting with sitar since 1961. i suppose it doesn't matter if the Beatles got it on a pop record first.

i've been listening to The Satanic Sessions boxset, it's been an interesting look into this time period. you can hear in the early rehearsals that "2,000 Light Years" is really all about the mellotron. without it, it may as well be another Stones blues-rock song. in its final form it is pretty great tho. i was kind of surprised at "Citadel", the early attempts had syncopated drums during the beginning, and it sounded pretty bad until they ditched it completely. that intro did not work at first, it was like they had no idea what they were doing.

"We Love You" is pretty awesome and a weird, an almost impenetrable song. Nicky Hopkins doing that piano riff sounds so cold and menacing, like an industrial version of "Hey Bulldog". Brian Jones gets some cool and weird sounds by percussively stabbing the mellotron. song has way too many chords in it though, they should have just rode that drone all the way home.

Ha! You mean 'Hey Bulldog' is a less industrial version of 'We Love You'! Thinking about it, it would make sense that The Beatles got influenced by what the Stones were doing, since John & Paul were on the session and everything. I love how overstuffed the mix is on 'Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby' and when they remastered it for Forty Licks, it brought out the song a lot. There's no doubt in my mind that they didn't have a clue what they were doing circa 1967... that's what makes the great stuff great, though!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted for 'Let's Spend The Night Together/Ruby Tuesday', but that was seriously difficult.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Top 2 OTM.

Have you seen your mother, baby, standing in the shadow?
Has she had another baby, standing in the shadow?
You take your choice at this time
The brave old world or the slide to the depths of decline

that last line makes me think of the Roman decadence, the fall of the empire, some Game of Thrones level drama going down. psychedelia via Caligula instead of Victoria. those trumpets are straight out of Colosseum games and chariot races.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Musicians_from_Zliten_mosaic.JPG

That Crossfire Hurricane documentary now on Netflix has some great old footage of the Stones. It is worth a look. It is surprising what all they filmed that shows up.

It's not that it's all rubbish, but the 45 disc "RSRecords singles" box has such a low level of achievement compared to the Deccas. Here they're channelling Caligula, various Russian authors and such - without it getting too pretentious thanks to putting the story over etc. Was it too much like hard work, and they got an easier ride writing easy lyrics?

Have You Seen Your Mother? was like the ultimate freakout. We came to a full stop after that. I just couldn't make it with that anymore; what more could we say? We couldn't possibly have kept it up like that. You just drain out totally. Because it's just the end of a certain period and we just had to stop. Because we'd done it, you know, there was nothing more we could do. And we just had to wait until we'd organized ourselves, and, you know, things have changed a little.

- Mick Jagger, 1968