Like what you see? Help keep it going! This site runs on the support of readers like you. Your donation helps cover costs and keeps fresh Rolling Stones content coming your way every day. Thank you!
Rolling Stones songs: As Tears Go By
My riches can’t buy everything/ I want to hear the children sing…
A SOFTER SIDE OF THE STONES It’s kind of wild to think that one of the first songs Mick Jagger and Keith Richards ever wrote wasn’t a rough blues jam, but the delicate ballad As Tears Go By. Originally called As Time Goes By, it stood in total contrast to the loud, gritty image the Stones had back then. Their manager passed it on to a young Marianne Faithfull, and her 1964 version became a surprise hit that kickstarted her career.
It’s almost ironic that one of the very first original songs written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards was not a wild blues riff or rebellious anthem, but a wistful ballad brimming with melancholy. As Tears Go By, originally drafted under the title As Time Goes By, felt worlds away from the rowdy energy The Rolling Stones projected in their early days. The lyrics, centered on the bittersweet contrast between children’s laughter and the weight of adult sadness, carried a reflective quality unusual for the band.
At first, even manager Andrew Loog Oldham thought the tune was too delicate for their image, so he passed it on to a then-unknown Marianne Faithfull. Her version, released in 1964, unexpectedly became a hit and catapulted her career forward. Faithfull would later laugh about how the song felt more like something Françoise Hardy might have sung—a sweet, almost fragile departure from the Stones’ raw beginnings.
Keith Richards on the Epiphany of Writing As Tears Go By
“I knew what Andrew wanted: don’t come out with a blues, don’t do some parody or copy, come out with something of your own. A good pop song is not really that easy to write. It was a shock, this fresh world of writing our own material, this discovery that I had a gift I had no idea existed. It was Blake-like, a revelation, an epiphany.”
More from Keith: “Suddenly, ‘Oh, we’re songwriters,’ with the most totally anti-Stones sort of song you could think of at the time, while we’re trying to make a good version of (Muddy Waters’) ‘Still A Fool.’ When you start writing, it doesn’t matter where the first one comes from. You’ve got to start somewhere, right? So Andrew locked Mick 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 contribution to the Stones. That was such a flatulent idea, a fart of an idea, that suddenly you’re gonna lock two guys in a room, and they’re going to become songwriters. Forget about it. And it worked. In that little kitchen Mick and I got hung up about writing songs, and it still took us another six months before we had another hit with Gene Pitney, ‘That Girl Belongs To Yesterday.’…
…We were writing these terrible Pop songs that were becoming Top-10 hits. I thought, ‘What are we doing here playing the f–king blues, and writing these horrible Pop songs and getting very successful?’ They had nothing to do with us, except we wrote ’em. And it took us a while to come up with ‘The Last Time.’ That was the first one we came up with where Mick and I said, ‘This is one we can lay on the guys.’ At the time we were already borrowing songs from the Beatles – ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ – because we were really hard up for singles. So they gave us a hand. In retrospect, during the ’60s the Stones and the Beatles were almost the same band, because we were the only ones in that position.”
Mick Jagger on Writing a Surprisingly Mature Ballad
“I wrote the lyrics, and Keith wrote the melody. It’s a very melancholy song for a 21-year-old to write: The evening of the day, watching children play – it’s very dumb and naive, but it’s got a very sad sort of thing about it, almost like an older person might write. You know, it’s like a metaphor for being old: You’re watching children playing and realizing you’re not a child. It’s a relatively mature song considering the rest of the output at the time. And we didn’t think of doing it, because the Rolling Stones were a butch Blues group. But Marianne Faithfull’s version was already a big, proven hit song… It was one of the first things I ever wrote.”
Recording Shifts and Lasting Echoes
While Faithfull’s success cemented the ballad in pop history, the Stones eventually circled back to make the song their own. In October 1965, Jagger’s voice and Keith Richards’ acoustic guitar were laid over Mike Leander’s sweeping string arrangement, recorded at IBC Studios in London. Interestingly, no other members of the band took part—this was essentially a Jagger-Richards duet, framed by orchestration. The single climbed the US charts, but in the UK its release was delayed for months to avoid clashing with The Beatles’ Yesterday. Once issued, it found a quieter home as the B-side to 19th Nervous Breakdown. Beyond the charts, though, As Tears Go By stood as a paradoxical early proof that the Stones could handle tenderness just as powerfully as swagger. It foreshadowed their ability to stretch beyond their blues-rock shell and hinted at the emotional depth that would seep into later classics.
Like what you see? Help keep it going! This site runs on the support of readers like you. Your donation helps cover costs and keeps fresh Rolling Stones content coming your way every day. Thank you!
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here:
Cookie Policy
Subscribe to the Stones Data newsletter and get all daily posts delivered to you for free. Everybody got to go! *Support this site and help us keep sharing great content. Thanks in advance!
