Big Hits (High Tide & Green Grass) Released: March 28, 1966

Big Hits (High Tide & Green Grass) in depth

The worst thing about Big Hits (High Tide & Green Grass) is its absurd title. The second worst thing about it is that the UK and US versions ended up being separated before birth, never to be properly reunited, causing version-control and programming anguish for fans everywhere ever since.

Moving on, the best thing about Big Hits (High Tide & Green Grass) is all 12 of the tracks. There is not a weak track on the record. Rollingstones.com isn’t a mausoleum or a shrine to past glories; and this review isn't a retrospective or an 'All Hail The Sixties!' tribute to something that's now over. But some albums and songs continue to deserve attention, and this collection and its constituent parts are among them. Here are the highlights. All of them.

Satisfaction: Enough said already, surely? The definitive anthem to thwarted desire is up there with as a perfect expression of youthful adventure, frustration and sexuality - what the poet Philip Larkin (also a notable jazz and blues critic, and a keen early fan of The Rolling Stones) referred to as ‘the pain and strength of being young’.

The Last Time: I’ve told you once and I’ve told you twice: this is the debut UK Jagger/Richards single, the third Stones UK number one, and the first time they wrote a song about Time. They’d hit the heights before with the temporally-tinged Petty–Hardin penned Not Fade Away, the Womacks’ It’s All Over Now and AKA Norman Meade’s masterpiece, Time Is On My side; but this was their own premier contribution to the chronological classification. And it’s timelessly brilliant. Really. It’s an unmissable 1960s artefact.

As Tears Go By: Andrew Loog Oldham whipped Mick and Keith into writing it, claiming a writing credit for himself along the way. Marianne Faithfull trilled a glass-brittle version of it into the UK top ten in 1964. The Rolling Stones covered their own cover in 1965, making the US top ten with a far more soulful recording, syrup and strings added for extra radio play lux. It’s not really Stones stuff, this ballad, but it does show that at this point Keith and Mick were learning how to put a song together, and that the band were prepared to play and release anything that fitted the moment, and to agree to any kind of production.

Time Is On My Side: AKA Jerry Ragovoy wrote this. The guitar version that you get on Big Hits is not the original (organ) version The Stones recorded; but it is probably the definitive one, not least because of its inclusion on Big Hits (High Tide & Green Grass). Hot spots? The guitar solo at 1:29, accompanied by Mick doing some definitive yowling – “You gonna be coming back” – or the entire drum and bass-propelled fade-out from 2:35.

It’s All Over Now: A swinging country number, quaintly mixed with echo chamber reverb effects for ten seconds from the off; at which point the sound is damped, and the song plods ahead gamely, albeit with clear intent. Check Charlie and Bill exchanging beats, while Keith and Brian noodle with the chords. Then, at 1:27, witness one of the finest guitar riff middle sixteens – maybe more like a middle thirty two – you’ll ever lay ears on.

Tell Me: The first Jagger- Richards song ever released. It’s not a blues tune – it’s a pop song, and a moody one too. You almost expect the words "I think I'm gonna be sad, I think it's today" after the Merseybeat intro. Only Mick’s strident US-accented Kent vocal, rather than a Scouse-flavoured brogue, distinguish it from, for example, Gerry and the Pacemakers. Well, that and the guitars: even then, Keith Richards sounded unique.

19th Nervous Breakdown: This is a full-on dose of vitriol thrown straight into the face of the people The Rolling Stones were beginning to meet as a result of their success in 1965. Listening to it makes you pretty glad that you’re not one of them, partly because you wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of that, but mainly because it leaves you free to love the reckless shaking, rattling, rolling CHOON.

Heart Of Stone: Listening to this, you can tell there’s something going on beneath the surface, something immoveable, something adamant. They mean it. Richards and Jagger are beginning to cook, and even though you don’t know what they’re going to serve, you can tell it’s going to rock, and it’s going to be hot.

Get Off My Cloud: There’s nothing left to say about this - indisputably one of the best three minute (actually 2:54) pop singles ever written and recorded, right up there with Satisfaction, see above - other than “Listen to it - Now”. If you need a guide, just start (and stay) with the drums, follow the bass, check the guitar riff, and then look out for the vocal – you can’t miss it, sung by a bloke with a massive mouth, all dressed up like a Union Jack, shouting his face off, answers to the name of Jagger. Really, it’s the ultimate shout and stomp 45”, this one – guaranteed, along with The Jacksons’ I Want You Back, to get everyone at the wedding giving it laldy on the dance floor. Everyone should listen to it at least once a day, on general health principles.

Not Fade Away: A song so clappy, snarey, riffy, snappy, punchy, that you don’t know where to look or what to do. Better get up and take a swing, start snapping the fingers, shuffling the feet, twitching the hips, clapping the hands, looking for a drum to tap. And sing along. He’s telling you how it’s going to be. You’re going to give your love to him. And it's not going to fade away. History has related that he was not wrong.

Good Times, Bad Times: It’s not weak – and the harmonica break alone is worth the cover price – but it is probably the most innocuous track on the record. It’s a bloody lovely thing, all the same, a perfectly controlled blues, and technically the first Jagger/Richards song The Rolling Stones released (it was the B side to It's all Over Now). “Mmm hmm hmm hmm”, sings Mick at the end, and you’re so with him.

Play With Fire: This is a song to scare the posh ladies, a candle-lit black mass hymn dedicated to the perils of messing with Messrs Jagger and Richards merely on account of you’re loaded and they're getting famous. It’s the second song (after 19th Nervous Breakdown) on the collection that expresses some genuine antipathy towards the fashionable women the band were beginning to attract in the social breakdown of hip/famous/talented/money London in the mid-sixties; and you get the strong, delightful feeling that the guys with the tunes and the moves are going to win the inevitable battle for dominance. Come on you Stones!

You may have all of these tunes on other recordings, but there’s still a huge thrill in putting Big Hits on and letting it wind out in this particular order. It’s a slice of excellence, of fun, thoughtfulness, spite, bite and developing musical craft that doesn’t stop giving,. You really ought to get your own.