
BUBBLE OF TROUBLE: bass player Bill Wyman at the front and (back from left) axe men Brian Jones and Keith Richards, chief poser Mick Jagger and unassuming drummer Charlie Watts.
- Songs
1. Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?
2. Paint It Black
3. It’s All Over Now
4. The Last Time
5. Heart of Stone
6. Not Fade Away
7. Come On8. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
9. Get Off Of My Cloud
10. As Tears Go By
11. 19th Nervous Breakdown
12. Lady Jane
13. Time Is On My Side
14. Little Red Rooster
Big Hits (High Tide And Green Grass)
Contains the great singles > from brutal to ballad > upon which the Rolling Stones built their reputation. If you get only one early, as in pre-1969, Stones album > this is it
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- March, 1966
- Rock On Rock Recommends:
The whole album
Get the British version > it has a better blend of songs, better track listing and 2 more songs than the US version.


MENACE to melancholy, pent-up frustration and love delectations > the song subjects here are as diverse as the tunes themselves > from purist blues to rhythm and blues, rock to romantic soft.
Singles in the 1960s were considered more important than albums and were > as demanded by the record companies > released every three months or so. But albums came out every six months or so as well.
The songs on High Tide and Green Grass launched the Rolling Stones to stardom as they earned the wrath of established society with their longer-than-the-Beatles hair, unkept looks and petulance > which endeared them to the more rebellious members of a new generation of youth eager to trample on tradition.
There was a trend not to release singles on albums, presumably because fans already had the songs, so many of the songs on High Tide and Green Grass had not previously appeared on albums, especially in Britain.
“The Beatles want to hold your hand > but the Stones want to burn your town”
> psychedelic writer Tom Wolfe. author of the sixties drug classic The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test.
THE SONGS
Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadows goes down a brooding back-street > strong bass and blasting trumpets entwined in a wall of sound. The band dressed in drag for this song’s publicity shots.
There’s more melancholy on Paint It Black, which starts with a splash of lonesome Keith Richards guitar before drummer Charlie Watts thumps in with an Arabic-type beat, backed by Brian Jones on sitar and Bill Wyman on organ. A jilted Mick Jagger sees everything the same colour as his blackened heart.

It’s All Over Now > a cover of the song recorded a few months earlier by the Valentinos, American R&B singer Bobby Womack’s band > is a rhythm and blues jogtrot with a vengeful vocal of breaking off with a lover “who done me wrong”.
There’s similar sentiments on the next two tracks, Jagger-Richards compositions The Last Time and Heart of Stone. [Hell hath no fury like a Mick Jagger scorned]
The Last Time was the first Jagger-Richards song released as a single, but was based on gospel song This May Be the Last Time by American group the Staples Singers. The Stones made it more rock oriented and turned it into a warning to the girlfriend to watch her step, rather than a spiritual.
Heart of Stone has a maudlin beat as the girls walking down the street are warned to best keep on going cause “I ain’t got no love, I ain’t the kind to meet”.
Not Fade Away, a song by bespectacled American 1950s singer/songwriter Buddy Holly, is given the Stones rock treatment, as is Chuck Berry’s Come On, though not so successfully. The Rolling Stones first single, Come On is more pop ditty than nitty-gritty. Not even the Stones liked it much and refused to play it on stage, despite the protests of manager Andrew Loog Oldham.
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, with its distinctive Keith Richards fuzztone guitar riff, struck a chord with the dissatisfied youth of the 1960s and > along with The Who’s My Generation > became the anthem of a generation.
![What a DRAG it is getting old > the Rolling Stones play dress-up on cover of single Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing In the Shadow > September 1966. A wheelchaired Bill Wyman [no, he wasn’t really disabled]; guitarist Brian Jones with a fag; grandma Keith Richards; Mick Jagger still doing his best to look beautiful and a decidedly uncomfortable Charlie Watts..](https://rockonrockmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/stonesindrag-276x300.jpg)
Get Off of My Cloud is also a great protest song of a fed-up man seeking solace from salesmen and neighbours complaining about the noise from his partying apartment at 3am.
19th Nervous Breakdown > a fast-paced ride through mental mayhem > puts down rock chicks hanging around the periphery of London’s swinging sixties. There’s even mention of an LSD trip.
Time Is On My Side features a ripping guitar break from Keith Richards. The Stones never cared much for long guitar solos, preferring an all-of-band sound with flashes of lead. Women again come in for derision as Jagger gloats of the ex-girlfriend who finds she can’t live without her alpha male. The Norman Meade-written song was recoded by US soul singer Irma Thomas just a few months earlier.
Little Red Rooster is pure blues as the cock-of-the-walk has the hen house on his mind. Guitarist Brian Jones > who would drown in his swimming pool just a few years later at the age of 27> plays slide guitar on a song said to be his most cherished musical memory.
The ballads on this album > both top tunes > are As Tears Go By and Lady Jane. The first was originally recorder by Marianne Faithfull after being written by her boyfriend Mick Jagger [poor girl] Lady Jane has a marvellous medieval feel as the joker in this royal pack seems to have trouble making up his mind between Lady Jane, Lady Anne and “my sweet Marie” [decisions, decisions!]
THERE’S A RIOT GOING ON
RIOTS at concerts were an irregular occurrence on early Rollings Stones tours, as were jibes from town officials, politicians and the like about their scruffy, unkept appearance.
There was even the media question at the time: “Would you let your daughter go out with a Rolling Stone”.
The group was often banned from hotels, partly because of trouble with fans, and had to flee fanatical, screaming fans after many concerts. Female faintings and knickers wetting during shows were common.
POLICE PUT FANS IN STRAIGHTJACKETS: Rioting audience causes concert in Belfast, Ireland, to be called off after only 12 minutes. Hysterical girls carried out in straightjackets. (1964)
POLICE USE WATER CANNONS: 5000 screaming fans dispersed by police with water cannons at Dusseldorf airport as the Rolling Stones begin a brief German tour. (September, 1965).
TEAR GAS: Police use tear gas to disperse a riot at a 15,000 fan show in Boston, USA, after audience members tried to storm the stage. (1966)
TWO POLICEWOMEN FAINT > as well as 100 girls > and more than 40 police needed to control the crowd at a concert in Manchester, England. (1964)
ANIMALS, CLOWNS AND MORONS: That was how a magistrate in Glasgow, Scotland, described the Rolling Stones after one of their fans was arrested for breaking a shop window. ROLLING STONES GATHER NO LUNCH: The headline in one the British tabloids after the band were refused entry to a Bristol hotel for not wearing ties. (1964) FANS SEE RED: Communist police, including on horses, use batons and tear gas to disperse 2000 fans outside the Rolling Stones concert venue > the Palace of Culture > in Polish capitol Warsaw. The Communist Party chiefs had kept the tickets for themselves and their families and cronies, leaving the real Rolling Stones fans seething outside. TV SHOW RIOT: An audience riot on US variety show The Ed Sullian Show, with the host vowing he would never let rock and roll bands back on his high-rating show. But he did, the Stones among them. (October, 1964) TAKING IT TO THE STREETS: 150 people arrested, the theatre damaged during street riots at the show at the Olympia in Paris. AUSSIE, AUSSIE, AUSSIE: A 3000 fan riot upon arrival at the airport in Sydney for the Rolling Stones first Australian tour. (January, 1965). The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper said of the group: “They’re shockers. Ugly looks, ugly speech, ugly manners” * ELECTRIC BLUES: Keith Richards survived being knocked unconscious by an electric shock during a performance in Sacramento, USA. (1965) ALL STITCHED UP: Mick Jagger had to get eight stitches to his head after being decked by a chair thrown on stage. > WORDS by MALCOLM LIVERMORE * Some source material from books The Rolling Stones Story by George Tremlett and Rolling With The Stones by former bass player Bill Wyman
THE INJURY LIST
PAINT IT BLACK
I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes
19TH NERVOUS BREAKDOWN
You’re the kind of person
You meet at certain dismal, dull affairs
Centre of a crowd, talking much too loud
Running up and down the stairs
On our first trip I tried so hard
To re-arrange your mind
But after a while I realised
You were disarranging mine
> Jagger-Richards