“As Tears Go By” is a song written by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham. It was released as a single by Marianne Faithfull in 1964 and peaked at number 9 in the United Kingdom. (More from Wikipedia)
Their manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham kept emphasizing to the two of them that there just weren’t that many obscure great songs out there. Although Mick Jagger disputes that it was really this literal, Keith Richards relates their first songwriting experience this way: “So what Andrew Oldham did was lock us up in the kitchen for a night and say, ‘Don’t come out without a song.’ We sat around and came up with ‘As Tears Go By’. It was unlike most Rolling Stones material, but that’s what happens when you write songs, you immediately fly to some other realm. The weird thing is that Andrew found Marianne Faithfull at the same time, bunged it to her and it [‘As Tears Go By’] was a f--kin’ hit for her – we were songwriters already! But it took the rest of that year to dare to write anything for the Stones.”
(May 2015)
