Rolling Stones Single-By-Single Thread

I'd like to follow along too. Good job @Parachute Woman

Come On
I always enjoy these early Stones songs. I like the beat, the tempo is kept nicely, the Come On is sung with just enough drawl to be on its own. It was always so amazing to me that they went from doing really decent covers to doing so many amazing originals.

 

I get that sense to, love so many of these older radio friendly tunes, but being a little older now I realize there was not a lot of innocence to many of these songs.

 

"Bye Bye Johnny" IMO was a better Chuck cover from this early era, and probably would have made a better single. "Fortune Teller" also wouldn't have been a bad option. But the pre-1st LP '63 band recordings are a pretty mixed bag overall.

 

I like both Poison Ivy and Fortune Teller better than Come On. Fortune Teller made it to number 5 in Australia.

 

Fortune Teller was top 40 in my town in 73. The single from More Hot Rocks, courtesy ABKCO.

 

I agree completely. Bye Bye Johnny is far better cover than Come On. I love that first EP and along with I Wanna Be Your Man really shows how far they had come in the short time since Come On/I Want To Be Loved.

 

I love that the band resurrected it in fine fashion on the great '72 tour as well...

 

I agree but they weren't alone in that respect in that era.
The Beatles, The Stones, the Kinks ,the Young Rascals, to a lesser extent The Who and many, many other great bands, and maybe most great bands did great cover versions and depended on covers until their own songwriting skills developed .

You learn to play by playing the songs that inspire you and/or the crowd wants to hear, until you develop your own style and your own following .

And then the bands like the Stones that start writing their own great material rise to the top, and the bands that can't write generally end up back being bar bands .

 

Also, you start out playing in clubs, playing what your audience wants to hear, what they know.

 

That was me killing time before my kid got home from school...I'm usually in bed by noon.

Best part of the album, as far as I'm concerned. Most of the songs on the first three sides of Fazed Cookies shoulda been on Hot Rocks! ("The Last Time" etc)

With the early Stones stuff it isn't how young Mick sounds but how 'polite', restrained and utterly tame he sounds compared to how he would sound within a few short years, even. He sorta sounds a bit tentative, not fully confident as a singer on the early sides. Fortunately he got over that...

So do I. Like I say, I have never liked "Come On", and quite frankly I can see why the Stones weren't happy with it either. It simply isn't a very good song and they gave it a really annoying arrangement IMO, almost as though they were trying to sabotage the track from the get go or something.

Cover 'em all, says I, and fortunately @Parachute Woman agrees!

 

If it's of interest, this was the reason it was withdrawn. They were scooped by a group of Scousers who released this something like a week before the Stones' version was scheduled to hit the stores:

 

Not a very good song??!!!



Loved Come On since the very first time I heard it, which I still remember.

Sure, the 'Stones take came out pretty lame, but I think the annoying arrangement was probably the best they could do with it at the time. I don't think Richards nor Jones were up to speed with the guitar licks on the original. I'm not very well versed on all the 'Stones historical arcana and minutiae so I don't know about whether the tune was pushed on them or not or what, but I don't think how it turned out for them is the fault of the tune itself. Come On, to me anyway, is clearly a far better tune than, say, I Wanna Be Your Man, which I think the 'Stones did a great job on, but apparently weren't super enthused about either. It seems they only performed it live a handful of times before letting it go completely by the wayside. I think Come On was a bit too much for them to do justice with at that very early juncture. I believe had they tackled it at a later date they'd have done a far better job with it. As their first single a-side, they might have been too by-the-numbers careful and simple to get a useable take ASAP and not take up more studio time than was their due as a new group.

 

Probably my least favourite of their 60s singles (I do like it though) but as someone pointed out, they needed something to get a foot in the door and something like this, a poppy London r&b merseybeat style number was probably the right compromise. Got them in the charts, on TV and in the music press, job done. The poor choice of near-follow-up (Poison Ivy/Fortune Teller) demonstrates the problem they were having with getting the right approach translating their club style into a record-sale friendly act. Luckily the Beatles were at hand to rescue them with a Ringo number.
Couple of points - someone mentioned that Decca didn't promote it maybe placing one ad ? I don't have access to my music papers right now but I feel certain I've seen Decca advertising for it in NME / Melody Maker / Record Mirror and Disc at the very least and in more than one issue so I'm not convinced that's correct. I'll have to check that out some time.
There is a story that they re-recorded Come On but having read so many period articles, this suggestion first seems to come up in 1964 and I am reasonably convinced that either it was a made-up story or perhaps there was confusion over the proposed follow-up 45 which they essentially seem to have spent a few months trying to sort out and we know they did in fact re-record Poison Ivy. Certainly press interviews/articles from the time make no mention of them re-recording Come On, I specifically remember one article where Mick briefly discusses the recording and he makes no mention of them re-doing the track although he mentions they weren't entirely happy with it.
I think the B.B.C. version is far stronger than the record.
Several great UK bands of the early 60s opened their accounts with what is now viewed as a pretty weak record - Beatles Love Me Do, Stones Come On, Kinks Long Tall Sally (that's a really bad one), The Who (as High Numbers) I'm The Face. With the exception of The Kinks it's quite startling how much they upped their game for the follow-up. Thank Rod that the Stones didn't release Fortune Teller/Poison Ivy. I Wanna Be Your Man was the number they were looking for. What an opening single that would have been....that slide guitar still stings !

 

Yeah...in my opinion.Yer entitled to yer own, Edogawa, that's what makes online discussion forums so great!

 

Like someone posted up-thread, everyone's got to start somewhere. Knowing what's to come makes it all worthwhile.

 

Yes, and they also were not happy with it. They recorded another go at Poison Ivy again later. The other version of Poison Ivy was added as a bonus track to the reissue of More Hot Hot Rocks.

 

I also think Come On is a great song. A real catchy, smart little pop tune, sometimes Chuck Berry wrote some amazing outliers like this one! One of my first Stones tunes as well, heard it at age 10 on the Hungarian "Big Hits" LP! I love their take on it, warts and all. In fact, I have had the song in my head all day after opening up this thread!

 

These two songs weren't even released in the U.S. until the More Hot Rocks LP, and the fake stereo on that set was a deterrent to becoming more than passively acquainted with them. I didn't really listen closely until the 1989 Singles Collection: The London Years set.

One reason the Stones weren't that enthused about "Come On" is that they saw themselves as a blues band, and the song was too "pop" for their then-current sensibilities. They had made a five-song demo in early 1963 consisting of two Bo Diddley covers, two Jimmy Reed covers, and a Muddy Waters cover, which more accurately reflected their stage show at the time. ("I Want to Be Loved" was one of the songs on that demo and was re-recorded for the single.) But neither of the big labels in England (EMI and Decca) was all that interested.

Only after a recommendation from George Harrison did Decca decide to take a chance on the Stones. Perhaps because of the leverage of the Beatle imprimatur (Decca's Dick Rowe was already infamous for having turned down the Beatles), Andrew Oldham was able to work out a deal with Decca in which the management team, rather than the label, maintained ownership of the Stones' masters. Oldham decided that the band's first single needed to be more commercial than their blues covers, and "Come On" was the compromise choice. As already noted, the band rarely played it live, and they were secretly thrilled that it was a minor hit rather than a chart-topper.

 

Come On reminds me of the Beatles during their Decca audition period...you know there's something there but it's not yet fully developed.
I see them more as finding their voice with their second single, that Beatles cover!
fwiw, I actually prefer their take to the fabs original.

 

Yes, that’s what I’d read, but I wonder if it’s really fact.
Hopefully someone here can set the record straight.

 

From a Setlist.fm

Come On (Chuck Berry cover)

• Leyton Swimming Baths, LondonNovember 23, 1963
• Gaumont Theatre, SheffieldOctober 22, 1963
• Odeon, ManchesterOctober 16, 1963
• New Victoria Theatre, LondonSeptember 29, 1963

 

I love both "Come On" and "I Want To Be Loved". Here come the Stones!

 

They've probably played "Come On" more in the Vegas era than they did when they first released it!

 

...not a good song but Chuck Berry's version with his daughter is not that bad..far better than the Stones...(for one time...!)

 

....I wonder why this song is always on Stones best of..it does not deserve it...