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(Credits: Far Out \/ Finnish Heritage Agency \/ Olavi Kaskisuo \/ Lehtikuva \/ William Morris Agency)<\/p>\n
Tue 17 February 2026 4:00, UK <\/p>\n
It is difficult to envision a time in which the leathery features of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger weren\u2019t among the core pillars of rock and roll royalty; when The Rolling Stones<\/a> were little more than a collection of teenage blues devotees burning off their excess energy. To this day, the band have Gene Pitney to thank for transforming those adolescent rockers into musical icons. <\/p>\n On first glance, the clean-cut shirt-and-tie combo of the Connecticut vocalist might seem worlds apart from the hedonistic, drug-fuelled rock rebellion of The Rolling Stones, but the two were actually more connected than you might think. During the early days of the Brian Jones-led outfit, the group\u2019s setlists were concerned exclusively with covers of American blues and R&B songs<\/a>, but the tides of the music industry were quickly shifting towards those who could write their own, original material.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the footsteps of the Lennon-McCartney partnership, then, Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham determined that Jagger and Richards should start composing their own tracks, too \u2013 even throwing them in a locked room together until they came out with some material, or so the legend goes. This was the decision that would eventually strike upon some of the most iconic rock songs to ever grace the airwaves, but the success wasn\u2019t instant. <\/p>\n Nobody writes \u2018(I Can\u2019t Get No) Satisfaction\u2019 on their very first attempt, after all. Instead, the uncharacteristically emotional \u2018As Tears Go By\u2019 was the first song<\/a> to be forged by the Jagger-Richards partnership, but that song was initially given to Jagger\u2019s girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, who made it into a top-ten hit in 1964.<\/p>\n Despite being the first official Jagger-Richards collaboration, though, that Marianne Faithfull classic was not the first of their songs to break into the UK singles chart. Instead, that accolade went to \u2018That Girl Belongs To Yesterday\u2019, another song which the pair never really intended to be recorded by The Rolling Stones. <\/p>\n
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<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover)<\/p>\n