Composers: Mick
Jagger & Keith Richards
Recording date: January-February
1965
Recording location: RCA
Studios, Los Angeles, USA
Producer: Andrew
Oldham Engineer:
Dave
Hassinger
Performed onstage: 1965-67,
1997-98, 2012-13
Probable line-up:
Drums: Charlie
Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Acoustic guitar: Keith
Richards
Lead electric guitar: Brian
Jones
Rhythm electric guitar (and solo): Keith
Richards
Lead vocal: Mick
Jagger
Background vocals: Mick
Jagger & Keith Richards
Piano: Ian
Stewart
Tambourine: Jack
Nitzsche
TrackTalk
We wrote The Last Time when we had a few weeks off. Mick and I played around with it for days because we weren't happy with the first title we thought up, which WAS The Last Time.
That was... important, I guess, to Mick and
myself because the previous songs we'd written, we'd given to Andrew
(Oldham)
and we'd done dubs and sold them off to somebody else, you know, to do.
So, I mean, that kind of... is a reason why we ended up with The
Last
Time because the Beatles
didn't
have another good one and we'd rifled (laughs) everybody else's
repertoire.
I guess we were just getting about into good enough to be able to
resort...
to write for ourselves, you know, and to believe we could do it.
When you start writing, the first batch of
songs is almost always puerile ballads, for some reason - I think
they're
easier to write. To write a good rock and roll song is one of the
hardest
things because it has to be stripped down so simple, to that same basic
format shared by rock & roll and rhythm & blues and Irish folk
songs from thousands of years ago. It's a very simple form, and yet you
have to find a certain element in there that still lives, that isn't
just
a rehash. It can REMIND you - and probably will - of something else,
but
it should still add something new, have a freshness and individuality
about
it. The rules on it are very strict, you see (laughs). I think The
Last
Time was the first one we actually managed to write with a BEAT,
the
first non-puerile song. It had a strong Staple
Singers influence in that it came out of an old gospel song that we
revamped and reworked. And I didn't actually realize until after we'd
written
it because we'd been listening to this Staple Singers album for 10
months
or so. You don't go out of your way to LIFT songs, but what you play is
eventually the product of what you've heard before.
The big difference is that our version was
faster and Mick sang it as a love song, whereas Pop Staples was singing
to God. I have no idea where Keith or Mick heard the song; it's not the
sort of thing that got played on the radio. I think they may have
bought
a Staples Singers' album on one of our many record-buying trips while
touring
in America.
We didn't find it difficult to write pop songs,
but it was VERY difficult - and I think Mick will agree - to write one
for the Stones. It seemed to us it took months and months and in the
end
we came up with The Last Time, which was basically re-adapting
a
traditional gospel song that had been sung by the Staples Singers, but
luckily the song itself goes back into the mists of time. I think I was
trying to learn it on the guitar just to get the chords, sitting there
playing along with the record, no gigs, nothing else to do. At least we
put our own stamp on it, as the Staples Singlers had done, and as many
other people have before and since: they're still singing it in
churches
today. It gave us something to build on to create the first song that
we
felt we could decently present to the band to play.... The Last
Time
was kind of a bridge into thinking about writing for the Stones. It
gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it. And once we
had
done that we were in the game. There was no mercy, because then we had
to come up with the next one. We had entered a race without even
knowing
it.
I just did the chords on The Last Time.
Brian's playing the main riff. I'm playing the acoustic and I also
overdubbed
the chords in the solo. Just passing chords.