The Rolling Stones - UK Decca Singles poll 1963-1969

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