What was the first Jagger/Richards song recorded by The Rolling Stones?
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are the axis on which every record by The Rolling Stones has turned for half a century now. The last two original members of the band still standing; they also happen to have been its core songwriting partnership since manager Andrew Loog-Oldham began pushing them to write their own compositions at the tail end of 1963.
It’s true that Brian Jones was the Rolling Stone who brought the group together in the first place. But his influence as its initial leader began to wane the moment it became clear that the collaboration between the band’s lead singer and guitarist had more potential for original hits.
Jones was a student of the blues, a brilliant multi-instrumentalist with an ear for interesting sound palettes. Richards had more of an instinct for crafting songs, though, with a knack for writing hard-edged hooks and structuring chord progressions. And Jagger was a wordsmith with a feel for fleshing out melodic lines according to what a song needed. Despite both being ardent blues fans like Jones, neither of the band’s two budding songwriters were hung up on the 12-bar formula to the extent that it got in the way of the music they wanted to create.
The song generally considered their first ever composition is a case in point Locked in a room by Loog-Oldham and forced to come up with something, Jagger and Richards wrote the stately chamber pop piece ‘As Tears Go By’. It was promptly handed over to Marianne Faithfull as it wasn’t considered Stonesy enough, although the group recorded their own version in late 1965.
What about their first Stones song, then?
Soon after this tentative songwriting effort, the pair wrote their first original Rolling Stones single. Again, this second song lacked the traditional blues flavour of the covers and group compositions involving Jones that the band had recorded up to that point. Instead, it took the form of a Spectoresque power ballad with overtones of white country pop.
‘Tell Me’ was first recorded in January 1964, soon after it was written. Jagger and Richards wrote the track less than three months after being shown the ropes of songwriting by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, during a studio session in which the Beatles duo came up with prospective Stones hit ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’.
Its chorus refrain apes ‘Be My Baby’ and exaggerated bass drum thumps and tambourine snaps only draw attention to this inspiration further. But it’s a creditable early composition that holds up in the sprawling Stones canon all these years later and deserved its shot at hit single status.
While ‘Tell Me’ came up short in terms of chart success, it opened the door for more Jagger/Richards compositions, giving the two young songwriters the confidence they needed. Less than a year after its release, ‘The Last Time’ became their first original hit, reaching number one in the UK alongside the US top ten.
They’d established themselves as artists who could create as well as reinterpret songs. And discovered the original sound that the Stones needed to transcend their R&B roots and become one of the world’s foremost rock bands.
