How two policemen perfected The Rolling Stones’ ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’
Rock stars aren’t often noted for their cooperation with law enforcement, and during the hedonistic heights of their fame, The Rolling Stones routinely found themselves the targets of drug busts, stakeouts, and the watchful eye of the British establishment. Ironically, then, it was two policemen who gave one of their biggest hits its final touch.
1967 was a pivotal year for London’s premier rock and roll outfit; not only did it see them release two vastly different records in Between the Buttons and the kaleidoscopic acid trip of Their Satanic Majesties Request, but it was the very same year that Keith Richards’ Redlands estate became the site of a drug bust and media frenzy. Both Jagger and his esteemed guitarist found themselves behind bars for a brief time, and they would soon head down to Morocco to escape the media frenzy – leaving Brian Jones behind in the process.
That transformative year, however, began with the release of one of The Rolling Stones’ most iconic tracks, ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’, which hit the airwaves in January and quickly shot to number three in the UK singles charts. As with virtually every Stones song of that era, though, the recording sessions for the single were expectedly chaotic.
At this point in time, after all, The Rolling Stones were still young men, only now they had a wealth of fame and riches behind them; asking them to sit down and calmly lay down a song as driving as ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’ in a calm, collected manner would be like asking a wild gorilla if he wouldn’t mind standing still to have his portrait painted. What’s more, the band had the added bonus of having to please their equally young, equally drug-addled manager, Andrew Loog Oldham.
Throughout the recording sessions, Oldham was determined to give the single a specific kind of sound, which he sought to achieve by clicking his fingers throughout the recording. Unsurprisingly, though, having a gang of anarchic British rock stars clicking their fingers and attempting to record a rock and roll masterpiece attracted some unwanted attention to the RCA Studio in Hollywood, where the recording was taking place.
Namely, two policemen walked through the open studio doors to see exactly what was going on behind those doors. After some presumable initial panic, though, Oldham managed to convince the pair that nothing untoward was occurring and asked the LAPD cops whether they would hold his headphones while he focused all his energy on the physically demanding task of clicking his fingers.
Exactly why the policemen stayed at the studio, other than carrying out their duty of holding Oldham’s headphones, remains unknown, but they were there long enough to contribute to the final recording. Glyn Johns, the veteran recording engineer, suggested that the track needed a more wooden sound, rather than Oldham’s incessant clicking, and so the policemen promptly suggested their truncheons.
That strange suggestion ended up becoming the final piece of the puzzle when it came to ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’, and Oldham can be heard employing those LAPD issue truncheons throughout the song, particularly during the quiet refrain halfway through.
Despite all the legal troubles that The Rolling Stones encountered over the course of the following year, one of the band’s stand-out moments from 1967 would not have sounded quite the same without the unlikely involvement of two Hollywood cops.
