Rolling Stones 3: Now!

The Stones were already being set up as the dirtier alternative to the comparatively clean-cut Fab Four, and their third American LP only helped that assumption. The band’s albums sported increasingly cryptic liner notes by their manager, who saw his charges as A Clockwork Orange come to life. The Rolling Stones, Now! uses the same doggerel on the back of their second British LP, recommending that purchasers mug blind beggars for the cash needed to buy the album. The horror, indeed.

So besides giving collectors variations to hoard, is the album any good? That depends on your taste. It begins as a mirror of their second British album, released the month before (and which used the photo from 12 x 5), using seven songs that were on that, but soon goes other places to make up for songs already used. Mick and Keith were still learning to write songs, so the band’s act remained something of a rhythm and blues revue, exemplified by “Everybody Needs Somebody To Love”. “Down Home Girl”, despite its Stonesy title, is a cover featuring Jack Nitzsche on piano, while “You Can’t Catch Me” is the album’s requisite Chuck Berry tune. “Heart Of Stone” is a decent Jagger/Richards composition (particularly in comparison to “What A Shame” and “Off The Hook”), and Bo Diddley’s “Mona” is the last American holdout from the first British LP.

“Down The Road Apiece” is a good slice from the Chess sessions the previous year, a song older than every Stone save Bill. “Pain In My Heart” and “Oh Baby (We Got A Good Thing Goin’)” are decent versions of recent R&B hits, but nothing special, while “Little Red Rooster”, with its expressive Brian Jones fills, was an unlikely #1 in the UK. Finally, “Surprise Surprise”, already farmed out to a compilation in the UK, wouldn’t appear on a proper British Stones release for another five years. It’s a fairly ordinary twelve-bar until the hook at the end of each verse.

The band clearly hadn’t mastered the album process yet, and they weren’t helped by a record label still focused on marketing to screaming girls and teen mags. But to survive in the wave of the British Invasion, bands had to endure and adapt, and that applied to the Stones, too.

The Rolling Stones The Rolling Stones, Now! (1965)—3