“Pushed My Version to the Side”: The Rolling Stones’ 1964 Hit That Proved Disastrous for Another Artist

Song sharing and reproduction are practices as old as music itself. But in the world of commercial recordings, it’s hard to ignore the professional damage that can occur from one artist’s version of a song overpowering and overshadowing another. For Irma Thomas, watching The Rolling Stones in the 1960s, she didn’t have the luxury of ignoring it. It was happening to her in real time.

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Because when you get right down to it, time isn’t really on anyone’s side in the ever-changing, short-attention-spanned music industry.

The Rolling Stones Scored a Hit With This Cover in 1964

The Rolling Stones put themselves on the map in November 1963 with their first No. 1 single in the United Kingdom, “I Wanna Be Your Man”, a gift from The Beatles. One year later, the English rock ‘n’ roll band would break into the American scene with their Top 10 hit, “Time Is On My Side”. Just like their first hit in their home country, “Time Is On My Side” came from a different artist first. But unlike The Beatles, who could hold their own as The Stones’ star rose, The Rolling Stones’ cover proved to be disastrous for Irma Thomas.

Thomas was the first performer to record a version of “Time Is On My Side” with lyrics (a previous version by trombonist Kai Winding was instrumental). It was the B-side track to “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)”, which broke into the Billboard Hot 100 in 1964. Consequently, Thomas had developed a professional association with “Time Is On My Side”. Even when The Rolling Stones began performing the track, they were pulling directly from Thomas’ version, including her vocal ad-libs.

But after The Stones released their version of Thomas’ B-side three months later, the world began thinking of the track as a Stones song, not an Irma Thomas song. “It wasn’t their fault that the general public decided it was their song,” Thomas later told Off Beat. “But it pushed my version to the side.” And in that way, Thomas couldn’t help but have a few hard feelings about the whole situation.

Irma Thomas Stopped Singing the Song Altogether

“My career was just beginning to climb a little bit before the British Invasion came along and killed it,” Irma Thomas said. “I didn’t get a lot of major work after those groups came to the United States. It was really quite difficult. That’s life.”

Adding salt to the wound was the fact that when The Rolling Stones toured the U.S., the band invited Tina Turner to open for them, not Irma Thomas. “She was more of a rocker than I was,” Thomas said. “She used to dress a lot more risqué than I would, so that might’ve been what did it.” (To Turner’s credit, she was a massive influence on Mick Jagger’s on-stage performance style, risqué outfits aside.)

In any case, Thomas stopped performing the song live until 1992. That year, Bonnie Raitt hosted a New Year’s Eve show in New Orleans and invited Thomas to perform. “She said that time had been on our side, and I should start singing the song again. I sang it with her, and now I do it again. It had been a long time.”

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