The songs that Mick Jagger gave away
More than six decades since their establishment, The Rolling Stones remain rock and roll’s most emblematic band. When the formative members of Brian Jones, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman first coalesced to bring blues to the UK charts, not even their wildest dreams could dictate the story to come.
In the early 1960s, Jagger and Richards first met on platform two of Dartford Railway Station. The pair, aged 18 and 17, respectively, found common ground in a mutual appreciation of American blues music by the likes of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Howlin’ Wolf. Thankfully, on the day of their chance meeting, Jagger was carrying a stack of blues records, granting the comparatively introverted Richards a perfect conversation starter.
The pair instantly hit it off and began collaborating in several groups, playing covers on the London blues circuit. By March 1962, they had met Jones and Watts, who played together in a band called Blues Incorporated at the Ealing Jazz Club. Following a series of line-up changes, The Rolling Stones, named by early band leader Jones, played their first gig with the classic ensemble on January 12th, 1963.
In their early days, the Stones leant with most of their weight upon the sturdy crutch of blues covers. In their 1964 debut album, The Rolling Stones, as a collective, wrote two original songs, ‘Little by Little’ and ‘Now I’ve Got a Witness (Like Uncle Gene and Uncle Phil)’, which were credited to the band’s pseudonym, Nanker Phelge.
Elsewhere on the album, just one original Jagger-Richards composition was introduced, ‘Tell Me (You’re Coming Back)’. Over the next two years and two albums (four in the US), Jagger ad Richards’ writing confidence blossomed to the point that every single track on 1966’s Aftermath was credited to their partnership, one that had already rivalled Lennon and McCartney with singles like ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’ the year before.
In most of their credited singles, Richards would handle the instrumental hooks while Jagger handled the lyrics. By the end of the ’60s, they had blitzed charts on both sides of the Atlantic with a scattering of hits and showed no sign of slowing down. In fact, Jagger’s creative juices through the Stones’ peak years were so abundant that he began writing songs for other artists.
‘As Tears Go By’ was the first song Jagger and Richards gave away. According to Richards in his book Life, the band’s manager Andrew Loog Oldham locked the duo in a kitchen in early 1964 and forced the pair to write. He even demanded a specific style: “I want a song with brick walls all around it, high windows and no sex.”
The pair emerged from the kitchen with an early draft of the song, titled ‘As Time Goes By’. Jagger and Richards despised the track, but Oldham saw its potential. “We thought, what a terrible piece of tripe,” Richards wrote in Life. “We came out and played it to Andrew, and he said, ‘It’s a hit.’ We actually sold this stuff, and it actually made money. Mick and I were thinking, ‘This is money for old rope!'”
Oldham felt the track was better suited as a ballad and hence suggested the Stones offer it to their promising 17-year-old labelmate Marianne Faithfull. The young singer released it in June 1964 as her debut single, which soared to number six on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number nine in the UK. The Stones later released their version of ‘As Tears Go By’ on their 1965 album, December’s Children (And Everybody’s).
Below, we list the nine lyrical compositions Mick Jagger gave to other artists over the years, including ‘Sister Morphine’, which Faithfull released as a B-side in 1969 before the Stones released their popular version on Sticky Fingers in 1971.
The songs Mick Jagger gave away:
- ‘As Tears Go By’ – Marianne Faithfull
- ‘Sister Morphine’ – Marianne Faithfull
- ‘Disease’- Matchbox Twenty
- ‘Silver Train’ – Johnny Winter
- ‘(Walkin’ Thru the) Sleepy City’ – The Mighty Avengers
- ‘So Much in Love’ – The Mighty Avengers
- ‘That Girl Belongs to Yesterday’ – Gene Pitney
- ‘We’re Wastin’ Time’ – Jimmy Tarbuck
- ‘When Blue Turns to Grey’ – Tracey Dey
