What was the first Jagger/Richards song to get to number one for The Rolling Stones?
Unlike their longtime British rivals The Beatles, The Rolling Stones didn’t start out with their own self-penned hit singles. They spent almost two years making a name for themselves on both sides of the Atlantic covering blues and Tin Pan Alley songs with their own inimitable swagger.
Then, in January 1965, something changed. Over in Hollywood during a tour of the United States, the Stones went into RCA Studios with a catchy three-note guitar hook Keith Richards had up with, and hastily-scribbled verses by Mick Jagger.
Their young impresario Andrew Loog-Oldham had booked them a session with famed producer Phil Spector. The session didn’t disappoint, creating the distinctive sound that would become the band’s hallmark. They’d managed to carry off authentic blues and R&B covers in their own style before, but this was music all of their own.
Less than two months later, Richards’ hook, Jagger’s lyrics and Spector’s production magic took them all the way to number one in the UK. This was the first time an original Stones song had topped the singles chart in their home country. Later in the spring, that same song became the first Jagger/Richards composition to enter the US top ten, peaking at number nine.
What was the song called, then?
The chart-topper that brought Jagger and Richards their first major success as songwriters was the hard-edged country-blues number ‘The Last Time’. It was also the first song the Rolling Stones were genuinely pleased with as a group, particularly after the studio session with Spector alongside Loog-Oldham in the control room.
Ironically, the chorus of ‘The Last Time’ had nothing whatsoever to do with the band’s main songwriting duo, as it was lifted word-for-word and note-for-note from the 1954 gospel-blues recording ‘This May Be the Last Time’ by Chicago-based vocal outfit the Staple Singers. Luckily, as Jagger would later point out, the song had its roots in a traditional spiritual with no known composer, and the family gospel group declined to give themselves songwriting credits on the record. So now, according to copyright law, at least, the piece belongs to Jagger and Richards in its entirety.
Despite the indisputable American influence on their first self-penned number one, the Stones would have to wait three more months to reach the chart summit stateside with something by Jagger/Richards via the single that came immediately after ‘The Last Time’. A single that shook the world and elevated the band to global superstardom. Once ‘Satisfaction’ exploded onto the airwaves like nothing before it, the band could truly claim to have broken America.
