The “Anti-Stones” Rolling Stones Track Mick Jagger and Keith Richards Wrote While Locked in a “Horrible Little Apartment”

What’s the best way to get two songwriters to have a productive writing session? As Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham discovered in the early 1960s, tell them they can’t use the bathroom until they come up with a song. Indeed, there’s nothing like the call of nature to conjure up the muse.

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As guitarist Keith Richards would recall to Guitar Player decades after his first, compulsory songwriting session with Mick Jagger, The Rolling Stones found themselves at an interesting professional crossroads around this time. The band had achieved success covering other people’s music, as was the tradition of the time, but Oldham wanted them to start working on original material.

Ironically, their attempt to get away from covers would become a cover for someone else. In this case, it was Marianne Faithfull, the band’s 17-year-old muse, who recorded the first version of Jagger and Richards’ first co-write in 1964. The song was a milestone hit for Faithfull (and she didn’t even have to endure Oldham’s restrictive production practices).

The Rolling Stones’ Manager Put Keith Richards and Mick Jagger Under Lock and Key

Speaking to Guitar Player in 2026, Keith Richards recalled, “Andrew [Loog Oldham] locked Mick [Jagger] and myself into a kitchen in this horrible little apartment we had. He said, ‘You ain’t comin’ out.’ And there was no way out. We were in the kitchen with some food and a couple of guitars. But we couldn’t get to the john. So, we had to come out with a song. In his own little way, that’s where Andrew made his great contributions to the Stones. That was such a fart of an idea.”

As harebrained a scheme as it might have been, Richards said, “It worked. In that little kitchen, Mick and I got hung up about writing songs.” The first real song with legs to come out of this lockdown writing session was “As Tears Go By”, which would put Marianne Faithfull on the map as a solo singer. Richards described it as “the most totally anti-Stones sort of song you could think of at the time,” which might have been partially due to their strange circumstances.

But then again, as Richards would say, “When you start writing, it doesn’t matter where the first one comes from. You’ve got to start somewhere, right?” Even, apparently, if that somewhere is a tiny kitchen with some snacks and guitars.

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