‘The Last Time’: The song that launched The Rolling Stones
It is difficult to imagine The Rolling Stones being anything other than the elder statesmen of rock and roll that they are today. For decades, the band have existed on the upper echelon of the music business, having penned a litany of utterly iconic tracks and set the standard for virtually every subsequent rock outfit. It is easy to forget, in all that rock malaise, that the band were once a bunch of adolescent rebels bashing out blues covers on the pithy stages of various clubs across 1960s London.
Brian Jones was the one who first formulated The Rolling Stones, coming together in 1962 under a common appreciation for the blues stylings of performers like Howlin’ Wolf or Muddy Waters. For much of the early 1960s, the band continued playing this blues circuit around the capital of the swinging sixties, earning themselves a relatively small but dedicated following in the process.
Along the way, they opened up for various other artists, including a stacked 1963 bill which also included Bo Diddley and Little Richard, but it would take a little while longer for them to become the infallible rock and roll stars that we know and love today. That reputation only seemed to arrive once the Stones began to write their own original material. At that time in the music business, the vast majority of hit singles were written for artists rather than by them. However, the pioneering songwriting of John Lennon and Paul McCartney changed all of that, and Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham recognised the potential for his band to do the same.
So, following the encouragement of their manager, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger began to write their own material togther. Early efforts like ‘As Tears Go By’ didn’t quite work out for the band – although that particular track became a hit for Marianne Faithfull – but they did at least hint at the potential within the pair’s songwriting partnership. It would only be a matter of time before the band struck upon their first self-penned hit, with the release of ‘The Last Time’ in February 1965.
Marking the first Jagger-Richards track to be released as an A-side for the band, ‘The Last Time’ earned the group their third number-one single in the UK and set the standard for songwriting and performance going forward. It was the song that altered the world to the presence of these angry young men and their blues-centric rock rebellion, paving the way for the unparalleled success and notoriety they now enjoy.
“It gave us something to build on to create the first song that we felt we could decently present to the band to play,” Keith Richards once said of the distinctive track. “‘The Last Time’ was kind of a bridge into thinking about writing for the Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it. And once we had done that, we were in the game.”
The Rolling Stones certainly succeeded in following up on the song’s success, too. Their next single was another original effort, named ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’. Of course, that particular song ended up becoming a colossal hit and arguably defined the sound of The Rolling Stones, particularly during that early period. However, it was ‘The Last Time’ which opened the door for that subsequent legendary anthem.
Ironically, given that the song was apparently the first Jagger-Richards composition to become a bona fide hit, ‘The Last Time’ has been marred in controversy since its release. After all, the songwriters have earned a fortune from the song, despite the fact that it was based heavily on a traditional gospel track, ‘This May Be the Last Time’, which was most notably recorded by The Staple Singers back in 1954. Still, it was Jagger and Richards who made the royalties from the track, and they continue to do so to this day.
