The Overproduced Rolling Stones Album Mick Jagger Once Called “More or Less Rubbish”

Good music is in the ear of the beholder, which would explain why The Rolling Stones disliked their fifth studio album, despite it peaking in the Top 5 of both the U.S. and U.K. charts and garnering the band their fourth chart-topping single in the States. Between the Buttons saw The Stones dabble in the timely psychedelic rock and Baroque pop trends of 1967, fitting in nicely with the rest of the albums coming out that year, like The Monkees and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

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But to the band, they fiddled with the album too much in post, sapping the rock ‘n’ roll lifeforce out of the record entirely. In a later interview, Mick Jagger said, “We recorded it in London on four-track machine. We bounced it back to do overdubs so many times we lost the sound of it. [The songs] sounded so great, but later on I was really disappointed with it.” He would add elsewhere, “The only decent song…was ‘Back Street Girl’. The rest of it is more or less rubbish.”

Artists being hyper-critical of their work is par for the course of being creative. But considering Between the Buttons housed chart-topping singles like “Ruby Tuesday” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, Jagger’s dismissal of the album (and those songs) is surprising.

Then again, there were greater forces at play responsible for souring The Rolling Stones’ perception of Between the Buttons.

The Rolling Stones Fought Against Censorship With ‘Between the Buttons’

The rowdy, raucous reputation we’ve come to associate with The Rolling Stones today was solidifying itself in early 1967. Shortly after the January 20, 1967, release of their fifth album, Between the Buttons, The Rolling Stones found themselves in intense legal trouble following the Redlands drug bust the following month. As if the attention from the cops wasn’t enough, the band was also facing scrutiny for what some deemed to be inappropriate lyrics.

Most notably, radio stations in the States banned The Stones’ A-side single, “Let’s Spend the Night Together”, for its suggestive lyricism. The stations played the single’s B-side, “Ruby Tuesday”, instead, which became a chart-topping hit in its own right. However, the band resented the American censorship over their A-side, and this conflict came to a head during a January appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. The variety show host insisted the band change the lyrics of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” to “let’s spend some time together,” which Jagger did, but not without rolling his eyes in the process.

Later, Jagger would express shame for giving in to the show’s request. “We should have walked off,” he said, per Old Gods, Almost Dead: The 40-Year Odyssey of The Rolling Stones. The decision to heed Sullivan’s request was largely that of The Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Unsurprisingly, this would be the last record Oldham produced for the band.

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