Mick Jagger / Keith Richards / 4:05
Musicians
Mick Jagger: vocals
Keith Richards: 12-string rhythm, backing vocals
Brian Jones: rhythm guitar, tambourine, backing vocals
Bill Wyman: bass, backing vocals
Charlie Watts: drums
Ian Stewart: piano
Recorded
Regent Sound Studios: February 24–25, 1964
Technical Team
Producer: Andrew Loog Oldham
Sound Engineer: Bill Farley
As the first recorded number credited to Mick Jagger–Keith Richards, “Tell Me (You’re Coming Back),” marked an important turning point for the pair. It also marked their ascendancy over the group and, as a consequence, the end of Brian Jones’s leadership, at least on a musical level. According to the legend, it was Oldham who essentially forced Jagger and Richards to shut themselves away in a room and stay there until they had written their first song or two. Wyman, however, contests this legend: “Andrew had been encouraging them to write their own songs for some time, although the story that he locked them in the flat until they wrote some material is just another Rolling Stones myth.”1 Whatever the facts of the matter, the duo had embarked on a highly promising path and started to write more and more songs. These include “My Only Girl,” recorded by Gene Pitney with the title “That Girl Belongs to Yesterday” in early 1964.
The first official Jagger-Richards composition comes as something of a surprise in that it is a pop ballad rather than a blues number, thereby confirming the growing influence of Andrew Oldham, who sees this as a way of reaching a wider audience—at the expense of Jones, who was a purist of the Chicago twelve-bar blues. The lyrics are somewhat sentimental: I want you back again/I want your love again. This is far closer to the sweet love songs of the beat groups than to the torrid “I Just Want to Make Love to You” and covers of Motown soul numbers, and the black rock ’n’ roll music of Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Jagger explains in 1968: “We didn’t want to do blues forever, we just wanted to turn people on to other people who were very good and not carry on doing it ourselves.”18
The recording took place on February 24 and 25, 1964. Mick Jagger recalls: “Keith was playing 12-string and singing harmonies into the same microphone as the 12-string. We recorded it in this tiny studio in the West End of London called Regent Sound, which was a demo studio.”19 And according to Keith, there was nothing finished about the version of “Tell Me” that eventually made it onto the record: “Yeah, and that was a demo. Andrew stuck it on the album because we needed another track. It was cut as a demo and Andrew was gonna try and flog it off to somebody.”11 In other words, Oldham wanted to find another artist to record it in order to generate royalties. Although no major artist has ever covered it, there have, to date, been fifty or so versions of the song. Keith opens the number with chords on his 12-string Harmony 1270, supported by Charlie on toms and Bill on bass (mixed down). Mick then launches into his vocal, aiming at breaking the hearts of the teenage girls he addresses both earnestly and in a tone of pained emotion. To say the least, “Tell Me” is not the Stones’ greatest masterpiece—either in terms of style (it is simply a pretty little song in the manner of the Merseybeat bands or the Dave Clark Five) or production (the ensemble is pretty untidy, particularly the vocal harmonies sung simultaneously by Keith, Brian, and Bill, which are not equal to those of the Beatles or even the Hollies, who attended some of the recording sessions for the album). Brian plays rhythm on his Gretsch, whose sound is curiously saturated through his Vox AC30. He also delivers a not particularly unforgettable solo based on arpeggios, whose reverb level gets progressively stronger (see his performance on the Mike Douglas Show in June 1964). It is also Brian who plays the overdubbed tambourine. In his excellent book Rolling with the Stones,1 Bill mentions that Stu was on piano, as the liner notes also make clear. But to hear his contribution requires some careful listening. Nevertheless, the Stones are unique, and despite being an early piece of work, this song possesses a charm that was soon to produce an effect, for “Tell Me” was released as a single in the United States (with “I Just Want to Make Love to You” [spelled “I Just Wanna Make Love to You”] on the B-side) on June 13, 1964, a week after the start of their first US tour. The release was a success, and it was with this song that the group entered the Billboard charts for the first time. It peaked at number 24 on August 8, 1964, and spent a total of ten weeks in the hit parade. This song was never released as a single in the United Kingdom. It is interesting to note that a number of years later, someone pointed out to Oldham that the English version was longer on the fade-out than the US version. Oldham, surprised, replies that he had not noticed at the time because he had been too busy, adding: “By the time I wasn’t too busy, I really didn’t care!”20