“As Tears Go By” – Single by Marianne Faithfull
B-side: “Greensleeves”
Released: June 1964
Label: Decca
Songwriters: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Andrew Loog Oldham
Producer: Andrew Loog Oldham
Charted No.22 in US, No.9 in UK and No.2 in Canada
“As Tears Go By” was one of the early compositions by Jagger and Richards; previously the Rolling Stones had chiefly been performing American blues and R&B tunes. By one account, Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham locked Jagger and Richards in a kitchen in order to force them to write a song together, even suggesting what type of song he wanted: “I want a song with brick walls all around it, high windows and no sex.”
The result initially was named “As Time Goes By”, the title of the song Dooley Wilson sings in the film Casablanca. It was Oldham who replaced “Time” with “Tears”.
Faithfull was damning about “As Tears Go By,” describing it as “a marketable portrait of me… a commercial fantasy that pushes the right buttons.” Despite this, she recorded it three times: as a 1964 single, for 1987’s Strange Weather, and again on 2018’s Negative Capability.
She was ranked 25th in VH1’s 1999 list of the Greatest Women of Rock and Roll, and in 2009, she was named icon of the year at the U.K.-based Q Awards. “‘I’m glad you can hear the experience in my voice,” she told Time Out New York in 2016. “I should think so, after 50 years.”
