We've all heard about the story when Andrew "locked up" Mick and Keith in a room and told them to come up we one song of their own. I think they wrote"as tears go by" in that kitchen. Right now I am reading a book called "The friendship of Wordsworth and Coleridge" by Adam Sisman. On page 135,the poet Coleridge is pressured by his editor to come up with written material for the magazine The Watchman(year1796). Coleridge promises his editor,Mr Cottle, that the poet will go to the editor's shop and write. Colerige wrote "I give you(Cottle) leave to turn the lock and key(of the shop) on me."
That image of locking up an artist in a room and to allow him to come out of it only when the work is done isn't new.
Rock and roll,
Mops

Goes back at least to Mozart? Or was it just the movie Amadeus?

I understand this story is just another myth, but wasn't "Tell Me" their first effort?

Yeah, wasnt it " -- (You're Coming Back To Me)"

>> I understand this story is just another myth, but wasn't "Tell Me" their first effort? <<

Tell Me was (of course) the first MJ/KR original to be released as a Stones single, but it isn't clear
what the first song they wrote was. Keith's sometimes said it was Tears, but ALO's clarified that it wasn't Tears;
nor was it likely to have been Tell Me - they'd already had originals released by other artists before Tell Me came out.

tunes like Shang a Doo Lang, Leave Me Alone and It Should Be You were among the first MJ/KR originals recorded
(in november 1963), and that doesn't mean their very first "kitchen effort" was one of those either.
it might have been something utterly forgettable - the important thing was that it was, and that more followed.

Mick's said the "lock-up" story is more symbolic than literal - that ALO was pressuring them to write,
so they felt locked in. ALO's said he left them alone in the flat for an evening with orders to produce.

ps: oh wait: nzentgraf.de has an unverified recording of What Kind of Girl listed in july 1963 -
that looks like the first rumour of an MJ/KR original being recorded. there was a fair-sized handful of them
by december 1963, none of which were As Tears Go By or Tell Me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-05 20:06 by with sssoul.

With a locked door, they might as well have been working on an embryonic "Can't you hear me knocking". What would you do but banging the door if you were locked up?

Let it rock!

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with sssoul
it isn't clear what their first song was, but ALO's stated that it wasn't Tears, nor was it likely to have been Tell Me.
tunes like Shang a Doo Lang, Leave Me Alone and It Should Be You were among the first MJ/KR originals recorded
(in november 1963), and that doesn't mean their very first "kitchen effort" was one of those either.
it might have been something utterly forgettable - the important thing was that it *was*, and that more followed.

Mick's said the "lock-up" story is more symbolic than literal - that ALO was just pressuring them to write,
so they *felt* locked in. ALO's said he left them alone in the flat for an evening with orders to produce.

ps: oh wait: nzentgraf.de has an unverified recording of What Kind of Girl listed in july 1963 -
that looks like the first rumour of an MJ/KR original being recorded. there was a fair-sized handful of them
by december 1963, none of which were As Tears Go By or Tell Me.

Mick's summary ties in basically with what ALO told me when I asked him about it a few years ago, and you're right in that they probably came up with some substandard efforts before they put together any that were usable.

Plus, I thought the first one that they used was 'That Girl belongs to yesterday' or 'It should be you' or something similar (maybe the one Nico Zentgraf mentions in your link). It wasnt 'Tell me' or 'as tears go by' which would date from 1964.

I also asked him why he chose Mick and Keith to be the songwriters at a time when Brian was widely regarded as the band's leader and driving force. He explained (in so many words) that it was evident even by that early stage where the creative dynamic in the band rested and that whatever talents Brian had, it was already apparent that songwriting wasnt going to be one of them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-05 19:42 by Gazza.

>> Plus, I thought the first one that they used was 'That Girl belongs to yesterday' or 'It should be you'
or something similar (maybe the one Nico Zentgraf mentions in your link). <<

was the july 63 What Kind of Girl rumour used for anything?
i know Shang a Doo Lang, It Should Be You, etc, were used by other artists,
and of course Gene Pitney's rendition of That Girl Belongs to Yesterday was their first hit ...
but as we're both saying, that doesn't mean any of those were literally their very first songwriting efforts.

we don't really know exactly when they came up with Tell Me (it was recorded in february 64) -
especially since Keith & Mick both always seem to forget about it when they talk about their early stuff.
but they've both talked many times about how hard it was to come up with something
that they felt brave enough about to propose as a Stones tune, so i reckon that fairly clearly indicates
that it wasn't one of their *very* first compositions.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-05 19:58 by with sssoul.

The one thing I don't understand about those early days is why did they write songs to give away to other artists and at the same time have their first three albums consist of mostly cover songs instead of MJ/KR songs.

In those days covers were the Deal. Almost noone wrote their own material.

>> why did they write songs to give away to other artists <<

it was probably not deliberate! the songs they were coming up with were simply better suited for other artists -
as both songwriters have noted, "it's easier to write a puerile pop ballad than a blues or rock & roll tune".
but you make money when other people record your songs, so why not unload them on someone else instead of throwing them out.
and they've both noted that it did wonders for their confidence to have their songs in the charts,
even if they were songs that they considered too cringeworthy to go anywhere near as performing artists.
Keith once said: "those songs didn't have anything to do with us, except that we wrote 'em."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-05 21:05 by with sssoul.

with sssoul,
Who really popularized the singer/songwriter activity, outside of the folkies who came before?

well, and then there were the R and B singers such as Sam Cooke, and the early solo rockers...and Buddy Holly and the Crickets...for rock bands, Was it the Beatles who really made writing mandatory or at least suggested, and then the Stones?

(Hope this doesn't seem too dense.)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-06 03:39 by angee.

I think Buddy Holly was one of the first big name artists that did it all himself. Sang, played lead guitar and wrote his own material. The Beatles, Stones, Dylan were among the first singer songwriters since I think it was still a new concept when they came on the scene but I think the way they changed music more was in making it a more album oriented art than a singles thing. A lot of the fifties/early sixties singers and groups were more singles oriented.

I think Keith said about those first efforts that they were surpirsed that they - as a blues and r&b band - didn't come up with something in that style but "with a silly ballad". Therefore, it is more likely that it is something like That Girl Belongs to Yesterday than Shang-A-Doo-Lang or It Should Be You. This was my experience too when I started writing songs. If youplay slow you probably have more time to think about which chord to play next...

Quote
FrankM
The one thing I don't understand about those early days is why did they write songs to give away to other artists and at the same time have their first three albums consist of mostly cover songs instead of MJ/KR songs.

Albums in that day were alos either just a collection of all singles released, or the material you played live. So basically what Jagger/Richards (and many others) did was write singles, not intended to be on albums unless they were hits.

Mathijs

I have always thought that it was 'The last time' that they wrote as their first. Not sure where I heard it but after all these years I have been wrong!

" I wish I had a tape recorder as well as my camera..." .... Bent Rej




Keith...Mick...Hotel Intercontinental Vienna 17 September 1965 - Photo Bent Rej



ROCKMAN

>> Who really popularized the singer/songwriter activity, outside of the folkies who came before? <<

in addition to the names mentioned while i was asleep in my farfetched time zone,
let's not forget Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and a great big long line of bluesmen -
who of course were drawing a lot on "traditional" song structures and lyrics,
but definitely represented the "self-sufficient songwriter/performer" tradition.

who "really popularized" it is a fascinating question. i don't know if it's just my personal perspective
that makes it seem like it was the "British Invasion" bands that really made it "de rigueur"
for popular musicians to play their own instruments and sing their own songs,
and revolutionized the whole popular-music business by doing so.
maybe it's just that i'm better informed about the UK end of things, but it seems like
the self-sufficient US artists truly didn't make as much of a dent in the way things operated
until the self-sufficient "British Invasion" acts came along. maybe the black American artists
weren't in a position to make such a direct impact; maybe Buddy just died too young;
maybe the music business in the US was structured differently and could "absorb" such artists better,
rather than being blown out of the water by them, the way the UK music business was.
and/or maybe it's just that a "critical mass" was reached when those British beat groups
took up the "authentic/self-sufficient" thing that they found so appealing in the American artists they loved.

sorry - i'm rambling! the question fascinates me, because that moment when self-sufficient artists
become unstoppably popular sure changed a lot in the music industry, and in the world.
and if it's right that it really was the "British Invasion" groups that were crucial to that,
i would love to understand better why that was, because they did it by standing on the shoulders of giants, for sure.

>> I think the way they changed music more was in making it a more album oriented art than a singles thing. <<

well but that important change was a direct result of the performing artists having the leverage in the business
to decide for themselves what to record - and that leverage is something that was gained primarily
through the artists being self-sufficient, rather than relying on the record company
to "match them up" with songs that the stables of pop-tune writers were generating,
and with backing bands that the record company had chosen and paid for. as Keith has summarized it:
"if you write the material, and you're the one performing it, no one tells you what to put on the record."

ALO's stroke of genius in getting the Stones a tape-lease deal with Decca, rather than a typical recording contract,
needs to be mentioned too. he didn't realize the ramifications of that at the time -
who could have?! - but it left the decision of what to record, and how it would sound, in the group's hands.
think of that: playing what you love, the way it should be played, rather than
just whatever some record company exec thinks will be a nice little pop hit this week -
man, just listen to the results of that, and say hallelujah



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2008-07-06 12:51 by with sssoul.

Hallujah! .. I also just wanna add to with sssouls glimmerin' essay here,
it might be viewed as some kinda amalgam or lurv effect when the folkies
from the US and the British invaders run into each other.

And so came the Summer of Lurrrv; it hasnt stopped yet, has it?