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Rolling Stones songs: Dandelion
*Click for MORE ROLLING STONES SONGS 1962-PRESENT

One o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock, five/ Dandelions don’t care about the time…

Also known as: Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Blue / Fairground
Written by: Jagger/Richard
Recorded: Olympic Sounds Studios, London, England, Nov. 6-Dec. 6 1966; June 12-13 1967
*Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012

From Songfacts:
This was recorded in 1966 but not released until the summer of 1967. The psychedelic sound fit in perfectly with the summer of love.

The lyrics are based on nursery rhymes.

This was used as the B-side of “We Love You” The “Dandelion/We Love You” single (both tracks listed as the entry) hit #1 in Canada in late 1967 for one week, preceded by The Box Tops’ “The Letter” and followed by The Ugly Ducklings’ “Gaslight.”

When his first daughter was born in 1972, Keith Richards named her “Dandelion.” Her mother, Anita Pallenberg, later called her by her middle name, Angela.

From the The Rolling Stones – All the Songs book:
Initially titled “Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Blue” (or “Fairground”),
“Dandelion” takes its inspiration from British counting or nursery rhymes.
The pauper, the beggar man, the thief, the tailor, the soldier, the rich man,
the sailor, and the tinker that crop up throughout this song are characters
from a counting game and nursery rhyme called “Tinker, Tailor” that dates
from the end of the seventeenth century.
This song, then, is a nursery rhyme, albeit a psychedelic one: One
o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock, four o’clock chimes/Dandelions don’t
care about the time/Dandelions don’t tell no lies/Dandelion will make you
wise… At the time this song was released (as the B-side of “We Love
You”), it was not difficult to imagine that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
were thinking of a quite different plant.