The 1965 Rolling Stones song that began as an attempt to copy Bob Dylan: “I wasn’t actually a thief”
You have the Rolling Stones manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, to thank for their first song, ‘As Tears Go By’.
When the band first got together, they did so with the intention of playing covers of their favourite R&B acts. They were pretty successful at the time, but their manager knew that if they were going to climb the ranks and cement themselves at the top of the charts, they needed to start writing their own songs. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger weren’t sure how to become songwriters, and so their manager locked them in a kitchen and said they couldn’t come out until they had a single. That single? ‘As Tears Go By’.
“Suddenly, ‘Oh, we’re songwriters,’ with the most totally anti-Stones sort of song you could think of at the time, while we’re trying to make a good version of (Muddy Waters’) ‘Still A Fool’,” recalled Richards, “When you start writing, it doesn’t matter where the first one comes from. You’ve got to start somewhere, right?”
The band started to get a bit more experience in songwriting by putting together various songs and records, but in those early years, Richards still found that it was a struggle to keep up with so much of the talent that was surrounding him. When he originally picked up a six-string, he wanted to be a great guitar player, not necessarily a great songwriter; the two things are very different.
“That was at a time where writing songs… you really didn’t know what you were doing,” he said, “Not that I do any more now when it comes down to it. I never thought of myself as a songwriter for a long time in that respect and then I realised that, in a way, that was the most interesting thing about what I was doing. I mean, I just wanted to be a guitar player. And then once writing became more serious… it took me so long to actually consider myself as a songwriter.”
So, what was the secret to writing a good song? For Richards, it was essentially a case of only stealing from the best, but not actually worrying too much about who he was stealing from. “To me,” he said, “It was all a matter of stitching bits and pieces together and wondering who I’d stolen it from and then eventually I realised that I was influenced but I wasn’t actually a thief.”
There were certainly a lot of people for Richards to be influenced by, after all, people were living in a real golden age for songwriters. The Beatles were blowing minds everywhere they went; meanwhile, Bob Dylan was essentially changing the world through his lyrics. Not only was he writing poetry and layering it over great music, but his lyrics were reflections of the world around him, he was holding up a mirror to society and letting people see it in a new light.
Who couldn’t be inspired by a great songwriter like that? Richards has admitted that when he put together the Rolling Stones’ 1965 song ‘Play With Fire’, he was trying to do two things: one, be inspired by London and the bustling nature of the world around him, and two, write a song like Bob Dylan. You can certainly hear the influence, and it makes for one hell of a Rolling Stones track.
“You’re listening to everybody else around you. Dylan was just starting to come around,” he said, “And there was John and Paul working. There was a whole sort of elevation of the art of songwriting – or at least the status of the songwriter – and being able to write and perform your own stuff so that you were a self-contained unit became quite important.”
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