Before they were “The World’s Greatest Rock ‘N Roll Band,” the Rolling Stones were one of the greatest pop groups, too. Celebrating the first ever release of their Sixties albums on CD with their original tracklisting, Matthew Weiner looks back at their work from 1966-67.


There’s a uniquely Rolling Stones moment on “Something Happened To Me Yesterday,” the closing track on 1967’s Between the Buttons. Essentially their contribution to the seemingly endless line of music hall-era throwbacks of the time (replete with big band, tuba and a toe-tapping melody), the track, by all due rights, should be abysmal – exactly the sort of thing the Stones, reigning bad boys of rock n’ roll, should be avoiding at all costs.

The song begins inauspiciously, with Mick singing of something “groovy” happening to him over Benny Goodman-like clarinet. He’s followed by Keith, bellowing the irritatingly-ingratiating chorus: “He don't know if it's right or wrong/Maybe he should tell someone/He's not sure just what it was/Or if it's against the law.” And when Mick starts embellishing the Thirties feel with quaint McCartney-isms like, “take your partner,” it’s no wonder some thought the Rolling Stones had become pathetic sell-outs to the prevailing pop fashions of the time.

Ah, but then comes the punchline: “Something Happened To Me Yesterday” is about taking acid. Music your parents could love…if it weren’t about drugs. Suddenly, not only does it all make sense, but the song’s instantly transformed from forgettable throwaway into yet another sly, brilliant fuck-you to the establishment, courtesy of your Rolling Stones, reigning bad boys of rock n’ roll.

When we think of the Rolling Stones, it’s fairly safe to say that the first thing that comes to mind for most of us isn’t “pop” – the kind associated with teen idols, old timey crooners and boy bands. “Rock group,” sure, but after all the deaths, near-deaths, blood transfusions, drug busts and all around sleaze, you’re as likely to use the sugary sweet descriptor when talking about G.G. Allin as you are the Rolling Stones.

But look back to the early 1960s, a different time to be sure, when no act made it big without getting haircuts and wearing silly three-piece suits and sweater vests that generally made them look like they were dressed for Sunday dinner at their grandparents’. Look back and you will find no band more uncomfortable being shoehorned into that look than the Rolling Stones.

Of course, they worked hard and fast to shed that image over the last forty years. But the Rolling Stones’ transformation into the World’s Greatest Rock n’ Roll Band didn’t happen overnight. On the way there, with records like Aftermath, Between the Buttons and a run of the greatest singles of all time, they would challenge the aristocratic establishment that raised them by chronicling its nervous breakdowns and pill-popping ways. And when they were finished, they discarded that establishment altogether.

And that’s where our story really begins.

With 1965’s “Get Off of My Cloud” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” the Rolling Stones had graduated from the ranks of British Invasion bands. No longer mere upstarts, the Stones were now poised to take on the Beatles.

And with the release of four epochal singles in early 1966—the ecstatic proto-punk of “19th Nervous Breakdown,” “Paint It Black,” “Mother’s Little Helper,” and “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In the Shadow?”—they made their move. Sparked by the newly discovered songwriting prowess of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and the exotic, subtly daring experimentation of Brian Jones, the Stones were no longer simply espousing British youth’s disenchantment with the status quo – they were actively taking on the established order.

Over a rollicking, swelling shuffle, “Breakdown” spoke to the rich, bratty kids that the Stones grew up with and what they had to look forward to. In typical fashion, Jagger offered a dreary, fatalist critique of the price to be paid by those with nothing to add to the sixties’ discourse. “Paint It Black”—possibly the bleakest song in the Rolling Stones catalog—addressed the darkness lurking around corner for their generation. Looking back at the song today, it still maintains a frightening power (“I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes/I have to turn my head until my darkness goes”), its mantra-like sitar-riff—particularly the Shankar-ian guitar intro—clearly influencing the Doors for their equally-downbeat “The End.” Only a rocking chorus relieves an otherwise sinister tension.

Next on an increasingly nihilist agenda, the Stones unmistakably set their sights on their parents’ generation, with the US-only single, “Mother’s Little Helper.” With the opening line, “What a drag it is getting old,” “Helper” hit a nerve, enhancing our boys’ reputation as misogynist pigs by mercilessly poking fun at bored, suburban housewives. Perhaps more dangerously, the song implied none-too-subtly that the generation who’d fought and won the war had about outlived its usefulness.

It was a point “Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In the Shadow?” (which the band promoted dressed in drag) drove home, but without its predecessor’s lightheardedness. With an overstuffed, menacing production replete with brass flourishes and slathered in echo and thunderous fuzz-bass, “Shadow” implied that mom was doing more with her time than simply popping pills and waiting for dad to come home. Though the suggestion of infidelity was perhaps the reason the song failed to chart as high as the group’s previous singles, the four singles sent an unmistakable message to the War Generation:

“Step aside and sod off.”

So how did five middle-class boys transform themselves from blues also-rans to chart-topping threats to the establishment? Credit one Andrew Loog Oldham.

Until his sacking in early 1968 following the critical and commercial failure of the Satanic Majesties psychedelic opus, manager, producer and enfant terrible Loog Oldham was in many ways the guiding light behind the Rolling Stones’ success, making the Stones notorious stars with guerilla press tactics presenting the band as the dark side of the British Invasion. Loog Oldham had fallen in love with the band at first sight, vowing to do whatever it took to make them famous. And make them famous he did, publishing ads like the infamous “Would You Let Your Sister Go With A Rolling Stone?” clip that only made the sisters want to go with a Rolling Stone even more.

By mid-decade, Loog Oldham shrewdly recognized that Bo Diddley tribute bands had a limited shelf life, and moved to transform the Rolling Stones into a veritable hitmaking machine. Knowing the precedent the Beatles had set, Loog Oldham’s first steps were to have the band make complete albums. That started with encouraging Mick and Keith to write together.

Though the effort began tentatively, the Jagger-Richards collaboration would bear considerable fruit within only a few years of the pair writing their first song together. At the same time the band was recording albums like Aftermath, Jagger and Richards were laying down fascinating demos of Stones and otherwise uncollected songs with the “Andrew Loog Oldham Orchestra,” many of which are at last available on the long out-of-print compilation Metamorphosis.

Often recorded as guides for other artists, versions of songs like Aftermath’s “Out of Time” take on an added appeal when compared to the Stones’ other work of the period. Where the latter, extended version of the song was sparse, featuring Bill Wyman on marimba, the orchestral “demo” of “Out of Time” would be utterly transformed into a massive Spector-ian production, with sawing cellos and a chorus that whomps with a soulful, Wagnerian grandeur even the classic original doesn’t have. If not the “definitive” version, per se (the backing track became a #1 hit with Chris Farlowe’s vocal), its success outside of the classic Aftermath was one example of the pair’s arrival as a major songwriting presence by the mid-Sixties.

As predicted by Loog Oldham, that presence began to show up in the form of consistent records. 1966’s Aftermath, the group’s first classic long-player, features a wider palette only their singles had hinted at previously, including the delicate “I Am Waiting” and the arch “Lady Jane,” in which Jagger counts the many fair and tender ladies he has conquered, predating the kind of medieval minstrelry that Richard Harris and Jimmy Webb would fashion three years later to great critical and commercial success. “Stupid Girl” and the popping Motown groove of “Under My Thumb,” in which Jagger sneers his girl is a “squirmin’ dog who’s just had her day,” were the most blatantly misogynist Jagger lyrics to date, with the singer fashioning a decadent persona that would be the calling card of the Stones’ work for decades. Even the blues jam of “Going Home,” which on earlier records would have been treated as mere filler, is here transformed into an epic production, clocking in at more than eleven minutes, with tempo changes and an unprecedented textural sophistication.

1967’s Between the Buttons, meanwhile, found the band further venturing into the pop realm, with its jazzy, textured opener, “Yesterday’s Papers” the music-hall vibe of “Cool, Calm, Collected” and “Something Happened To Me Yesterday,” and the proto-power pop of “Miss Amanda Jones.” The influence of the Kinks was undeniable, resulting in their least blues-oriented record yet. And with the success of the fantastic double A-side, “Let’s Spend the Night Together/Ruby Tuesday” the Stones had firmly established themselves as a bonafide pop group. But for the band, as the next year would make abundantly clear, pop was just another hat – albeit one with a pink, frilly plume.

As compelling as their sixties music was, the manner in which the Stones’ records were marketed shouldn’t be overlooked. First and foremost, the sleeve art cut an iconic image; those photos of albums like Between the Buttons, with the band bundled in overcoats, are as enduring as any of the Stones music during that time.

But one of the least recognized but most telling aspects of the Stones’ legacy is how that music was sold. Because this was the Sixties, Decca/London, the Rolling Stones’ UK/US labels respectively, never quite figured whether to issue singles separate from albums or to just take the singles from the albums themselves. The result was often confusing, with UK editions taking the former path, while the US opted to drop a few album tracks for their editions in favor of the hit singles. It’s not hard to understand why Greil Marcus later wrote, “Don't be surprised when you buy "Ruby Tuesday" for the fourth time, come a year from now” in a review of one of the many hits compilations that subsequently became available. Though each compilation seemed like it contained the same collection of songs—“Paint It Black,” “Mother’s Little Helper,” “Ruby Tuesday,” Decca would shrewdly include a gem like “Have You Seen…” that was heretofore unavailable on LP.

Aside from being maddeningly frustrating for the consumer, the marketing strategy had the effect of increasing exponentially the hysteria for an already hysterical audience. It seemed owning everything by the band was always out of reach. Given how that’s a sensation that has continued for thirty years with the recent ABKCO reissues, which have no bonus tracks and a few recordings still missing, its incompleteness is likely no coincidence.

By the time of Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Rolling Stones were—somewhat ironically—leading members of the rock aristocracy – second to only the Beatles in terms of chart dominance. But times were changing. Loog Oldham, his influence on the band fading, was gone from the producer’s chair and soon would be fired as manager. Jones, Jagger and Richards were involved in drug busts by an ever-more threatened establishment. And the decidedly un-Stones-ish psychedelic music was in. Love-ins not being the band’s forte aside, it didn’t stop them from taking a stab at it.

The word on Satanic Majesties from the start was that it was an unfocused, phony, bandwagon-jumping load of pap – sort of the musical equivalent of Sinatra getting “with it” when he donned love beads and sandals following his marriage to Mia Farrow. In the last decade or so, however, a dramatic revisionism has taken place. As the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper has been downgraded from masterpiece to classic, many claim Satanic Majesties—which featured Lennon and McCartney on backup vocals and even imitated Sgt. Pepper’s artwork—to be unjustly neglected. Some have even called the record one of the high watermarks of psychedelia.

A more objective reading of the record brings the hyperbole back down to earth. The Stones were clearly grappling with psychedelia – specifically, how they could adapt to it. And they did succeed – but only partly.

With the double A-side “We Love You” and “Dandelion” single released prior Satanic Majesties, the Stones’ dilemma was on most obvious display. Where the latter track was Jagger’s obvious and failed attempt at flower-power pop right down to its name, the rollicking “We Love You,” opening with the sound of a jail cell door slamming, was a double-edged, bitter put-down of both the hippie movement and the justice system that had now turned the tables on them, with its verse:

You will never win 'we'
Your uniforms don't fit 'we'
We forget the place we're in
'Cause we love you
We love you
Of course we do

“We Love You” was a thinly veiled expression of the Rolling Stones’ disdain for hippies. Unfortunately, its sentiment wasn’t included on the bi-polar quickie that was Satanic Majesties. The record is fascinating from a production standpoint, with atonal brass, swirling, stuttering Mellotrons and strings complimenting fuzz-bass and thunderous percussion. But Satanic Majesties strains to convince the listener that “We Love You” was a fluke – that they’ve really bought into sentiments like love-ins and “singing this altogether.” As an espousal of hippie dogma, the record’s a joke.

Still, Satanic Majesties is an engaging, if not consistently compelling listen. In spite of (and in some cases, because of) unexceptional songwriting, the record is Jones’s moment in the sun, with the opportunity at last to experiment wildly. As a consequence, several tracks are fine, if not classic examples of psychedelic rock, including the fuzz-toned “Citadel” and Bill Wyman’s effects-laden “In Another Land,” which sounds like a lost outtake from the Piper at the Gates of Dawn. And the record has two classics, including the proto-space rock of “2000 Light Years From Home.” A menacing bad trip, “Light Years” is augmented by Jones’ creepy Mellotron, Wyman’s popping bass and the storming drums of Charlie Watts. It’s no wonder the song was long ago critically resurrected as the record’s tour de force.

But again exposing the dark/light discrepancy between the Stones’ approach to psychedelic music, “She’s A Rainbow” was the hit that should have been. Where the accomplished melody and arrangement of “Dandelion” were obscured by the track’s unconvincing grasp at flower power rhetoric, “She’s A Rainbow”—a simple lysergic ode to a mystical hippie girl—suffered no such fate, with majestic Mellotron brass, a striking piano figure and massive hook. Perhaps even more so than “2000 Light Years From Home,” “She’s A Rainbow” is the track from the era that deserves belated classic status.

But the band were among the first to dismiss the record, with the criticism of the ever-cynical Richards particularly harsh. In the wake of Satanic Majesties’ critical failure, the Stones quickly regrouped to record the classic “Jumping Jack Flash” and Beggar’s Banquet, which found the band definitively arriving at the jaded blues-rock that would become their hallmark for the ages. Along with The White Album, the rootsy back-to-basics quality of Beggar’s Banquet would signal the end of a movement that had reached its apex with Sgt. Peppers. All across the industry, from the Beatles to Dylan to the Beach Boys, stripped-down arrangements and painful sincerity were the order of the day. Big productions—ambition with a capital A—were finished.

In retrospect, it all seems fine, if a little boring. Even if Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed are as “classic” as the Stones get, it’s a little safer by comparison, as if nothing were at stake.

Of course, things were still at stake. Viet Nam was ongoing and increasingly bloody. Hard drugs were in. And the dreaded Richard Nixon was president. Without question, by the time of the murderous disaster that was the Altamont music festival the next year, the world was experiencing the hangover of the sixties. Bad vibes and decadence were in to stay. By all accounts, the creators of “Paint It Black” and “Have You Seen Your Mother” should have been thrilled. “Out with the old,” right?

Well, maybe not. Even if they had been the ones ushering it all in, the Stones themselves didn’t seem to have the foggiest notion of what they’d wrought. The sight of Jagger meekly imploring the hopped-up, nasty Altamont crowd to calm down while performing the nasty “Under My Thumb” and “Sympathy For the Devil”—ironic to say the least—is evidence of that. All the Stones had done was to help tear down the establishment, with nothing—certainly not the band themselves—to fill the vacuum.

So maybe that’s why those anti-establishment records are so endlessly fascinating – more so, really, than the balls-out rock n’ roll they recorded since. Even if laughing at conformity or making fun of mom’s pill addiction isn’t exactly cutting edge anymore, for those of us too young to remember, these records remind us vividly of a time when it was. They’re the sound of youth – gifted, arrogant and hell-bent on burning it all down.

Whatever successes they’d have later on—and there were many to be sure—the Rolling Stones were never this vital again.