“The Last Time” by The Rolling Stones

"The Last Time" was the Rolling Stones' first original to go out as a UK A-side, a Mick Jagger and Keith Richards song cut at RCA Studios in Hollywood in January 1965, and it gave them their third British number one, sitting on top for three weeks that spring. American fans got it on the US edition of Out of Our Heads that July.

Its bones come from church: the chorus matches, tune and words, "This May Be the Last Time", the gospel song the Staple Singers recorded in 1954, itself drawn from a 1926 sermon by Reverend J. M. Gates. Cash Box heard a raunchy, hard-driving romantic blues about a couple bound to split. Brian Jones and Richards play the guitars, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts hold down the bottom, Jack Nitzsche shakes the tambourine, and Andrew Loog Oldham produced.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.