By the start of 1965, The Rolling Stones had scored two No. 1 hits in their U.K. homeland. Those include “It’s All Over Now” and “Little Red Rooster.” Those songs were cover tunes, and the band had yet to top the chart with an original composition by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
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That changed on March 18, 1965, when “The Last Time” ascended to No. 1 on the U.K. singles tally. Jagger and Richards had based the song on “This May Be The Last Time,” a traditional gospel tune recorded by The Staple Singers in 1954. The Stones song’s chorus featured lyrics and a melody taken straight from “This May Be The Last Time.”
The Rolling Stones recorded “The Last Time” at RCA Studios in Los Angeles in January 1965. The track features a distinctive repeating guitar riff played by founding member Brian Jones.
“The Last Time” knocked Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” from the top of the singles chart. It spent three weeks at No. 1 before being replaced by “Concrete And Clay” by the British pop group Unit 4 + 2.
In the U.S., “The Last Time” became The Rolling Stones’ second Top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 9. The band’s first single to reach the Top 10 in the States was its cover of the Jerry Ragovoy-penned “Time Is On My Side.” That tune peaked at No. 6 in 1964.
About Jagger and Richards’ Early Songwriting History
“The Last Time” was the first Rolling Stones song credited to Jagger and Richards that was a U.K. hit. That being said, Mick and Keith had co-written “As Tears Go By.” That song was recorded by Marianne Faithfull and reached No. 6 on the U.K. singles tally in 1964.
In addition, The Rolling Stones had broken into the Top 40 of the Hot 100 with two other Jagger-Richards compositions in 1964—“Tell Me” and “Heart Of Stone.” Those tunes weren’t hits in the United Kingdom, though.
Incidentally, The Rolling Stones’ first No. 1 hit in the U.S. was the Jagger-Richards-penned classic “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which topped the Hot 100 on July 10, 1965. “Satisfaction” became the band’s fourth U.K. No. 1 in September of 1965.
Keith Richards on Writing “The Last Time”
In Richards’ 2010 memoir, Life, he reflected on the significance of him and Jagger coming up with “The Last Time.” He noted that when he and Mick initially started writing together, they mainly had been coming up with ballads. And they felt those weren’t right for the band to record. Basically, those earlier tunes didn’t fit the group’s bad-boy image.
“It took us eight, nine months before we came up with ‘The Last Time,’ which is the first one that we felt we could give to the rest of the guys without being sent out of the room,” he maintained. “If I had gone to The Rolling Stones with ‘As Tears Go By,’ it would have been ‘get out and don’t come back.’”
Songfacts: The Last Time | The Rolling Stones
This was the first song Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote that was an A-side single. The Stones played a lot of covers before they learned to write songs.
He continued, “[‘The Last Time’] had a Stones twist to it, one that maybe couldn’t have been written earlier—a song about going on the road and dumping some chick. ‘You don’t try very hard to please me.’ Not the usual serenade to the unattainable object of desire. That was when it really clicked, with that song. … But that song defined us in a way, and it went to number one in the UK.”
Richards also thanked early Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham. He insisted that Richards and Jagger start focusing on writing original tunes.
“Andrew created an amazing thing in my life,” he noted. “I had never thought about songwriting. He made me learn the craft, and at the same time, I realized, yes, I am good at it. And slowly this whole other world opens up, because now you’re not just a player, or trying to play like somebody else. It isn’t just other people’s expression. I can start to express myself, I can write my own music. It’s almost like a bolt of lightning.”
(Photo by David Redfern/Redferns)
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