BETWEEN THE BUTTONS
Between the Buttons is the fifth British and seventh American studio album by The Rolling Stones, released on 20 January 1967 in the UK and 21 January in the US as the follow-up to Aftermath. It was the beginning of the Stones’ brief foray into psychedelia. In 2012, the American version of Between the Buttons, which included “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and “Ruby Tuesday”, was ranked #357 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. (More from Wikipedia)
The name of Hollis Brown is taken from a Bob Dylan song “Ballad of Hollis Brown”. (Did I mention that I have a cover version of “Ballad of Hollis Brown” by Iggy and the Stooges? Quite good also). Like “Ruby Tuesday” (which became the name of a major American restaurant chain) and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (Jumpin’ Jack Flash is also the name of a Whoopi Goldberg film, and as I remember, the song lyrics figure into the story also), Amanda Jones is a character in a Rolling Stones song, “Miss Amanda Jones”. The song appears on one of my favorite Rolling Stones albums, Between the Buttons – “Ruby Tuesday” also appears on that album, at least the US version. I don’t think it a coincidence that the UARB shares its name with this song, though I suppose it is possible.
According to the promotional material by Bomp! Records for the band’s EP, Amanda Jones, Amanda Jones was born in March 1995 as a collaboration of Amanda (Mandy) Brix and Jeff Drake, previously in the punk rock band the Joneses. The combination of her first name and his former band name clearly brought about the band name Amanda Jones, but they were almost certainly mindful of the Rolling Stones connection also: Their sound has the same kind of playful spirit as early mid-period Stones albums like Between the Buttons (released in January 1967); besides “Miss Amanda Jones” and “Ruby Tuesday”, the album also includes the song “Let’s Spend the Night Together” that got the band into so much trouble with The Ed Sullivan Show – Mick Jagger sung the title lyric as “let’s spend some time together” as Ed Sullivan insisted, though he and bassist Bill Wyman were rolling their eyes at the time. A few months back, I discussed the controversial lyrics in their first big hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”; the Rolling Stones were able to sing that number on The Ed Sullivan Show with no censorship.
Speaking of which, Between the Buttons ends with a song called “Something Happened to Me Yesterday”; from Wikipedia: “At the time of the song’s release, [Mick Jagger] said: ‘I leave it to the individual imagination as to what happened.’ Matthew Greenwald calls it ‘one [of] the most accurate songs about LSD’."
(December 2015)
