By the time “The Last Time” was released in 1965, the Rolling Stones were already bonafide superstars. Their blues-meets-rock sound translated from their native England to the U.S. as part of the British Invasion. With hits “Time is on My Side,” “Heart of Stone,” “Tell Me” and “It’s All Over Now” preceding it, “The Last Time” kept the Stones on the rock music map. But the song owes its sound to a gospel tune that was cut by a legendary soul and R&B group.
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Meaning Behind the Song
Co-written by bandmates Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, “The Last Time” was recorded in Los Angeles in January 1965 between the conclusion of the Irish Tour 1965 and their trip down under to Australia and New Zealand on the 1965 Far East Tour. In an interview in Jagger and Charlie Watts’s 2003 book, According to The Rolling Stones, Richards said they wrote “The Last Time” as an attempt to release something more pop-leaning.
Additionally, in the first episode of the online series, The Rolling Stones – Chronicles, the band’s history of being influenced by Black American blues artists such as Chuck Berry is explored. That influence can be heard in “The Last Time,” especially as it draws inspiration from the gospel standard, “This May Be the Last Time,” which the Staple Singers made famous with their 1954 recording. The lines in the chorus of “The Last Time” by the Stones are similar to the original ones in the gospel song, as the rock band reprises, This could be the last time / Maybe the last time / I don’t know, at the end of the chorus.
“We didn’t find it difficult to write pop songs, but it was VERY difficult–and I think Mick will agree–to write one for the Stones,” Richards explains. “It seemed to us it took months and months and in the end we came up with ‘The Last Time,’ which was basically re-adapting a traditional gospel song that had been sung by the Staple Singers, but luckily the song itself goes back into the mists of time.
“At least we put our own stamp on it, as the Staple Singers had done, and as many other people have before and since,” he adds. “They’re still singing it in churches today.”
“The Last Time” took the band to the top of several charts, including the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and No. 1 on the UK Singles chart. It also became a staple in their live shows. Richards says that writing the hit helped expand the Stones’ palette as songwriters.
“‘The Last Time’ was kind of a bridge into thinking about writing for the Stones,” he notes in According to The Rolling Stones. “It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it. And once we had done that we were in the game. There was no mercy, because then we had to come up with the next one. We had entered a race without even knowing it.”
Photo by David Wolff-Patrick/Redferns
