What was the first complete song Mick Jagger ever wrote?
Despite going on to be known and loved as one of the world’s top songwriters, it took Mick Jagger quite a while to get into the craft. At the start of their life as a band, The Rolling Stones were preoccupied with cover versions, taking their favourite songs and giving them a twist. But in 1967, that finally changed.
It was the done thing back then. Similar to how the foundations of jazz lay on a selection of standards, as artists recorded their take on the same top songs, rock and roll began the same way. As the early sounds of the genre floated across the Atlantic, introducing British bands to the world of American blues that planted the seeds for rock, new groups took these songs and made them their own. The Beatles were busy doing covers of Chuck Berry’s ‘Roll Over Beethoven’ or the Top Notes’ ‘Twist and Shout’, The Yardbirds were doing takes on Howlin’ Wolf tunes, and The Rolling Stones began as a covers band, gigging around London and performing their version of classic blues tracks.
On their first albums, only a small handful of tracks were written by the group, crafted as a team effort. But predominantly, the tracklist was made up of covers of tracks by the likes of Chuck Berry, Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, and the best of the blue legends that inspired them.
John Lennon once claimed that The Beatles were the reason why the Stones finally stopped doing covers and began writing their own songs. On one night out, when the Liverpudlian band had promised to write the Londoners a song, Lennon and Paul McCartney finished it right there and then, going off for a little bit and coming back with a completed tune. “We came back and that’s how Mick and Keith got inspired to write, because, ‘Jesus, look at that. They just went in the corner and wrote it and came back!’” Lennon recalled, “Right in front of their eyes, we did it. So we gave it to them.”
It’s thought that the first song written by Jagger and Keith Richards as a songwriting team was ‘As Tears Go By’ in 1964, a ballad which they gifted to Marianne Faithfull to record. From then on, the pair found a synergy and flow, learning how to craft tunes together and becoming one of the most powerful duos in the industry.
But for Jagger alone, it took him a while to figure out how to do it solo. “I think the first song I wrote melodically was ‘Yesterday’s Papers’”, he said, picking out the 1967 track. He clarified that it was “the first song I ever wrote completely on my own for a Rolling Stones record.”
Sitting on the album Between The Buttons, his first completely solo effort came once Jagger and Richards had well and truly found their feet as songwriters and already had some hits under their belt. Now a seasoned professional, Jagger was ready to go it alone as his musical force was finally and fully established.
