“It doesn’t matter”: The song Keith Richards called anti-Rolling Stones
It was at a Muddy Waters gig that Mick Jagger and some of his fellow The Rolling Stones realised they wanted to be rock stars. His exuberant guitar playing and grit-filled vocals were the perfect combination to get hearts racing and blood-pumping, so much so that a wide-eyed and excited Jagger was ready to start a career that would see him become a musical legend.
Once you decide that you want to be a rock star, the rest seems so easy. Pick up a guitar, write some hits, conquer the world. How hard can it be? Well, as Jagger and Keith Richards found when they started writing music for the first time, it was pretty hard. When you begin to take it seriously, it’s less about just making music but making music that fits in with your brand and will be something you’re comfortable playing in front of audiences.
Andrew Loog Oldham had a very clear vision for branding the Rolling Stones. While The Beatles were busy taking over America with their polished look and swoon-worthy love songs, Oldham wanted Rolling Stones to be the opposite or an exaggerated version of what people found controversial about the Fab Four. They had long hair? Stones would be longer. They were cheeky? Stones were downright flamboyant. They wrote pop? Stones were rock.
For the most part, it’s fair to say that the Rolling Stones have stayed within that vision. They are the band that embodies the pillars of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll better than any other musical outfit at the time; however, it took them some time to grow into this image. When Richards and Jagger first started writing music, they ended up penning a song that, despite being successful, Richards said was anti-Rolling Stones.
“We had a number one hit with Marianne Faithfull,” he said when discussing the track ‘As Tears Go By’, ”So suddenly, ‘Oh, we’re songwriters’, with the most 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’.”
Despite their first song being far away from the sound that Rolling Stones wanted to achieve, Richards doesn’t regret writing ‘As Tears Go By’. Firstly, because it was a hit and put the band on the map, but also because it got his and Jagger’s cogs turning, which allowed them to become better songwriters in the long run.
“When you start writing, it doesn’t matter where the first one comes from,” he said, “You’ve got to start somewhere, right? So Andrew locked Mick and myself into a kitchen in this horrible little apartment we had. He said, ‘You ain’t comin’ out’, and there was no way out.”
Richards admits that Oldham had some good ideas, and locking him and Jagger in a room until they could come up with a song idea was one of his best. “We were in the kitchen with some food and a couple of guitars, but we couldn’t get to the john, so we had to come out with a song,” he said, “In his own little way, that’s where Andrew made his great contribution to the Stones. That was such a flatulent idea, a fart of an idea, that suddenly you’re gonna lock two guys in a room, and they’re going to become songwriters. Forget about it.”
