The Rolling Stones - UK Decca Singles poll 1963-1969

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