It’s no secret that The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards wasn’t a massive fan of the band’s earlier material. In his eyes, it took a while before they found their signature sound that made them stand out from many other major players at the time. However, there’s one song that he ended up liking the most, which also became a top ten hit both in the United Kingdom and the United States.
The song that Richards said he actually liked was also one that he contrasted with earlier songs he’d written with Mick Jagger. In Keith Richards on Keith Richards: Interviews & Encounters, Richards discussed the band’s evolution and trajectory, saying: “You tend [at first] to write stuff that’s totally different from the stuff you’re actually playing. It takes a while. I think ‘The Last Time’ is the first song we wrote for the Stones that we could actually record ourselves.”
He went on to discuss what the band was like before ‘The Last Time’, explaining: “Before that, we’d written ‘That Girl Belongs to Yesterday,’ which Gene Pitney had a hit with, and ‘As Tears Go By,’ which Marianne [Faithfull] had a top ten with,” he said. “It took us a year or so to find our way through all that and find songs that we could feel comfortable about recording ourselves.”
In a 1989 interview, Richards was prompted to identify the first song that defined the Rolling Stones. Reflecting on their journey, he said: “The first one we truly felt content with was ‘The Last Time,’ which we attempted as a group.”
In the same interview, Richards delved into the significance of ‘The Last Time’ within the band’s trajectory. “That was about six to nine months after ‘As Tears Go By,’” he said. “It was that long before we could find a style that would fit the Stones.”
‘The Last Time’ achieved significant success, soaring up the charts. It secured the number nine spot on the Billboard Hot 100, maintaining its presence on the chart for a span of ten weeks. This track found its place within the album Out of Our Heads, which in turn claimed the top position on the Billboard 200 chart for a duration of three weeks, enjoying a total of 65 weeks on the chart.
‘The Last Time’ reached success in the United Kingdom as well, reigning at number one for a noteworthy three-week stretch and enduring on the chart for a total of 13 weeks. Interestingly, though, although the song is credited to Jagger and Richards, many have noted that the song’s refrain is similar to a traditional gospel song recorded in 1954 by the Staple Singers called ‘This May Be the Last Time’.
Richards acknowledged this in 2003, saying, “We came up with ‘The Last Time’, which was basically re-adapting a traditional gospel song that had been sung by the Staple Singers, but luckily the song itself goes back into the mists of time”.
Aside from this, Richards often called out Rolling Stones’ biggest hits as either not being very good in his view or falling victim to processes that were either rushed or not very considered. ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’, for example, was the band’s answer to the people’s demands, a rushed response to the fans expecting another hit. Richards was aware of how much their material suffered as a result, saying he “never dug it as a record”.
