There’s no doubt The Rolling Stones are an influential band. The decades-long career, iconic songs, and list of No. 1 albums attest to that fact. In an interesting twist, the Stones basically covered two Mick Jagger and Keith Richards songs after the duo gave them to Marianne Faithfull.
The Rolling Stones covered 2 Mick Jagger and Keith Richards songs — ‘As Tears Go By’ and ‘Sister Morphine’
Richards and Jagger needed time to develop as songwriters. It’s one of the reasons The Rolling Stones leaned heavily on cover songs early in their career.
Mick and Keith gave away the song that became their first top-10 hit as songwriters, but that secret success seemed to give them confidence in their craft. It also wasn’t the last time they let another artist take a crack at their songs.
Jagger and Richards wrote the ballad “As Tears Go By” and gave it to Marianne Faithfull, Mick’s girlfriend at the time. Faithfull’s rendition reached No. 9 in England in August 1964, per the Official Charts Company. The song also landed on Faithfull’s self-titled debut album in 1965 before the Stones recorded it for their album December’s Children (And Everybody’s) that same year.
Jagger and Richards wrote“Sister Morphine” while Faithfull chipped in. She recorded the song first and released it as a 1969 single that never reached the charts. The Stones “covered” it on Sticky Fingers two years later.
Faithfull co-wrote “Sister Morphine” with Jagger and Richards, and they gave her first crack at it before The Rolling Stones recorded it. Still, it later caused a bit of a headache when Faithfull wanted a larger share of the royalties as she said her contributions were just as significant as Mick and Keith’s.
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Marianne Faithfull recorded ‘As Tears Go By’ 3 times
She cracked the top 10 with the Jagger and Richards song the Stones eventually recorded for themselves, but Faithfull wasn’t all pleased with her first take of “As Tears Go By.” She recorded it two more times and finally nailed it on the third try.
Faithfull once said her 1964 version of “As Tears Go By” was too happy. The rendition she recorded in 1987 was too melancholy. Like the three little bears, the third attempt, recorded for her 2018 album Negative Capability, was just right. It struck the proper balance between hopeful and sad.
The three versions reflected different moments in Faithfull’s life. She was only 17 when she recorded “As Tears Go By” the first time, a strange age to sing a song about getting older. Faithfull leaned in the other direction when she sang it in middle age. As an older adult, she found the perfect perspective to sing about youthful joy and losing it as you grow older.
Budding songwriters Mick Jagger and Keith Richards gave away two songs to Marianne Faithfull that The Rolling Stones later “covered.” Faithfull took “As Tears Go By” into the top 10, but the Stones’ versions of the song as well as “Sister Morphine” are still the definitive versions.
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