(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Thu 18 December 2025 13:10, UK
It’s difficult to look back at the counterculture explosion and imagine living in it, let alone being one of the main innovators behind it. The mid-1960s were high times for The Rolling Stones.
Having stepped out of the shadow of The Beatles and established themselves as a grungier and more dangerous take on pop stardom, the Stones were cranking out classic records at a phenomenal rate. By 1966, the music world was beginning to shift in earnest toward the expanded possibilities of psychedelia.
The Rolling Stones were at the forefront of the movement, cranking out boundary-pushing tracks like ‘Paint It Black’ and ‘Lady Jane’ that year. The tracks, along with the band’s notorious behaviour, set them apart from the rest of the rock and roll set. The Beatles were finding God, while it felt like The Rolling Stones were simply dancing with the devil.
One of the group’s headier and lesser-known singles from this period was ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?’. A full-blown freakout featuring a stop-start rhythm and a blaring horn section, ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby’ was the furthest that the Stones had pushed themselves up to that point.
Pushing boundaries had become the name of the game as the bands desperately tried to separate themselves from one another. Music was now a battleground, and taking a new step was a small victory worth grabbing. But sometimes, that came at a cost. Unfortunately, according to Keith Richards, that push was too much too soon with regard to the final mix of the song.
An unusual ashtray in The Rolling Stones’ abode. (Credits: Far Out / Bent Rej)
“I liked the track, I hated the mix,” Richards claimed in 1982. “Mainly because there was a fantastic mix of the thing, which was just right. But because they were in a rush and they needed to edit it down for the Ed Sullivan Show – ’cause we were booked to play our latest single, which was gonna be ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?’ – the mix was rushed and the essential qualities of it, for me, disappeared. Because… just because of the lack of time, you know.”
The final session for ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?’ was logged on September 8th, just three days before the group mimed the song during an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Less than two weeks later, the song was given a proper single release, even though Richards later lamented the hurried production.
“It needed another couple weeks,” Richards claimed in 1971. “The rhythm section is almost lost completely.” While Bill Wyman’s bass remains robust throughout the final mix, Charlie Watts’ drums are only barely audible. The same goes for the guitars laid down by Richards and Brian Jones. Instead, a cacophony of trumpets was given priority in the mix. “We tried trombones, saxes and nearly all permutations of brass before arriving at the trumpets,” Richards explained in 1966. “Everything but the trumpets dragged.”
“Keith always felt that the incorrectly mixed version was released as the single,” Wyman claimed in his autobiography Rolling with the Stones. “The rhythm section is buried in the mix, and it failed to create as much excitement as we all felt it should have done. Although we took longer to record and mix this single than any of our previous releases, Keith always felt it needed more – this was the beginning of the future!”
For Mick Jagger, ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?’ represented the end of the band’s experiments with psychedelia. “‘Have You Seen Your Mother?’ was like the ultimate freakout,” he said in 1968. “We came to a full stop after that. I just couldn’t make it with that anymore; what more could we say? We couldn’t possibly have kept it up like that. You just drain out totally. Because it’s just the end of a certain period and we just had to stop. Because we’d done it, you know, there was nothing more we could do. And we just had to wait until we’d organised ourselves, and, you know, things have changed a little.”
The fact that the song represents such a pivotal moment for the band means that it deserves its praise. Poor mix or otherwise, to have a song provide a sensible moment to reflect and recalibrate means it is valuable to the band’s legacy. Without this moment, there’s a good chance the incredible records that followed wouldn’t have been of such high quality.
Check out ‘Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?’ down below.
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