Behind the Album: ‘Between the Buttons,’ an Unheralded Rolling Stones Album Straddling Separate Eras

The Rolling Stones have released a slew of albums throughout their career that have been scrutinized and inspected down to every last note of music. Their 1967 album Between the Buttons isn’t one of those albums, instead occupying a somewhat nondescript spot in the band’s catalog.

It wasn’t a thrilling step forward, a return to old glories, or even a notable misfire. Between the Buttons found the Stones between eras and styles. But it nonetheless includes a memorable batch of songs, especially when you count both the U.S. and UK versions of the record.

Buttons Up

The Rolling Stones kept as hectic a schedule as anyone in the mid-’60s, touring, recording, and making appearances with a fervor that showed they were serious about being the biggest rock band in the world. In the second half of 1966, the finally earned a little time off from the road, which afforded them more of an opportunity to concentrate on the studio.

Brimming with ideas, they recorded enough material not just for the new album, but also for the next few singles. If anything, they were too ambitious to make Between the Buttons a classic, because it doesn’t exactly cohere in the way that, for example, their previous record (Aftermath) does.

This was also a band in transition. Where they had once hewed close to the blues tradition that had been their early identity, they couldn’t help but be influenced by the baroque pop influences of the era. It’s also fair to say they had one eye (and ear) always on what The Beatles, The Kinks, and other British Invasion bands were doing on their records.

Between the Buttons also predated their all-in embrace of psychedelia on Their Satanic Majesties Request, which was released at the end of 1967. Granted, the overall quality of the songs on Majesties fell short of Between the Buttons, but it was more thematically together. The reputation of Between the Buttons has also been damaged by Mick Jagger, who has never shied away from criticizing it in interviews.

One other factor that affects the way this album is viewed: the two competing versions. In the U.S., the hits “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday” (which were singles only in Great Britain) replaced “Back Street Girl” and “Please Go Home,” which were on the UK release. We’d argue the first three of those four songs are, quality-wise, top of the entire heap of Between the Buttons material. A Frankenstein monster, 14-song version of the album is as good as any of their pre-Beggars Banquet albums.

Examining the Music on Between the Buttons

You can get a bit of whiplash listening to Between the Buttons. “Yesterday’s Papers” comes on like lounge rock, only to be contrasted with the frantic outburst of “Connection.” “Who’s Been Sleeping Here?” owes a debt to Bob Dylan, while “Something Happened to Me Yesterday” rumples along as if beamed in from the Vaudeville era.

Between the Buttons is at its best in capturing the softer side of the group. “Ruby Tuesday” is a piercing character sketch, “She Smiles Sweetly” saunters about in a lovely haze, and “Back Street Girl” offsets its harsh lyrical sentiment with one of the band’s loveliest melodies. On all these tracks, the exotic instrumental contributions of Brian Jones are crucial. By contrast, the uptempo numbers tend to get a bit samey-sounding, with the exception of the hard-charging “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and the frantically bluesy “Please Go Home.”

Between the Buttons sounds at times like a compilation taken from various albums, such is its unwieldiness. But the high points fly in the face of this record’s reputation as middling Rolling Stones product.

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