In 1965, the Rolling Stones had already charted two #1 singles in the UK. But, they hadn’t written either of them – like much of the Stones’ repertoire, they were covers. Their manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, challenged Mick and Keith to become original songwriters, like their competition, Lennon and McCartney. Earlier, the Stones had been looking for material and heard that Lennon and McCartney might have a song for them. They got together at a club and the Beatles showed them how easily it could be done, going off to a corner and coming back with “I Wanna Be Your Man.” The Glimmer Twins, as they would come to be called, were gobsmacked. They were also inspired. Keith says Andrew literally locked them in a kitchen with orders to stay there until they’d written a song. Mick says the lockup was figurative.

Whatever the case, in early 1965, Mick and Keith came up with “The Last Time” a drastic re-working of a traditional song recorded by the Staple Singers in 1958. “The Last Time” was released as a single in the UK on February 26, 1965, and on March 16, became the first #1 song credited to Jagger and Richards. In a neat role reversal, “The Last Time” would go on to be covered by many other artists, including the Grateful Dead, The Who, Bruce Springsteen, and The Tractors.

“’The Last Time’ was . . . important, I guess, to Mick and myself because the previous songs we’d written we’d given to Andrew and we’d done dubs and sold ‘em 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 good enough to be able to resort – to write for ourselves, you know, and to believe we could do it.” Keith Richards, 1982

“I suppose we’d been writing for almost 9 months to a year by then, just learning how to put songs together. And with “The Last Time,” it became fun. After that, we were confident that we were on our way, that we’d just got started.” Mick Jagger, 1979

Indeed, the songwriting duo of Jagger and Richards, or Richards and Jagger, or the Glimmer Twins, as their songs were variously credited, was off and running. They went on to chart 13 #1 songs in the UK, the US, or both.

• “19th Nervous Breakdown” (UK)
• “Angie” (US)
• “Brown Sugar” (US)
• “Get Off Of My Cloud” (US)(UK)
• “Honky Tonk Women” (US)(UK)
• “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (US)(UK)
• “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (UK)
• “The Last Time” (UK)
• “Miss You” (US)
• “Mixed Emotions” (US)
• “Paint It, Black” (US)(UK)
• “Rock And A Hard Place” (US)
• “Ruby Tuesday” (US)

Ladies and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones.