The Rolling Stones – Play With Fire b/w The Last Time (Decca, 1965)

I spotted this – scratched, dusty and unloved – in my parents’ record collection when I went home for Christmas. Not that I had any sinister record-swiping agenda you understand, it’s just that I was idly sketching out potential cover art for a 7” single and I needed to find one to draw around to get the size right, and… well anyway, there is was. I think the reason I’d never clocked this one before whilst flicking through our house’s shoebox of ancestral 45s is that, as you can see, the label on the a-side has been torn off, rendering the music within a mystery. This time round though, I was drawn for whatever reason to turn the disc over to investigate further, and discovered it was by the ‘Stones! Score! I wasn’t familiar with the song “The Last Time”, but still, a sixties Rolling Stones single! Clearly this one needed to take a trip back with me to London, and a functioning record player.

So, after forgetting about the damn thing for a couple of weeks, it was only the other day that I finally dropped the needle and discovered the a-side is ‘Play With Fire’. Double score! I’m sure I don’t need to waste time telling you how good the song is. Surely the most beautiful, unconventional and sinister of all the early Jagger/Richards songs, slowly rising like scented black smoke from my hi-fi speakers in glorious, fuzzy mono through a thick curtain of crackle. More than ever, it sounds less like a run of the mill Rolling Stones single and more like the kind of thing Mick Jagger’s character from ‘Performance’ might have charted with in his glory days. Evil, decadent jangle-folk for the masses. Wow.

But even wower, it turns out ‘The Last Time’ is a fucking brilliant number too. It’s an r’n’b derived original with a great melody that sees the band hitting the same kind of raucous, party-shaking groove that made their early, pre-fame singles so hot. The twangy lead guitar hook (I’m not enough of a Stones geek to immediately identify it as the work of Keith or Brian, though I’d guess the latter) is absolute punk genius, and it’s got one of those great, lolloping slightly-too-polite Charlie Watts rhythms going on. It’s funny how although the innumerable thousands of garage bands who idolised the Stones had a natural tendency to tear off in crazed pursuit of the high-energy finish-line (and I bless them thrice daily for it), as I get older I’m really starting to appreciate the more subtle pleasures of Charlie’s old-fashioned approach to things, and this song is a perfect case in point. Marvel as he helps cement the band into a fiendishly hot, deceptively mid-paced groove that – I would like to think – could still kick off some smouldering action on yr nearest dancefloor nearly fifty years after the fact, whereas most of our Nuggets faves would simply give rise to carnage and confusion. Let’s hear it for Charlie!

I don’t know whether this record is worth anything in terms of money, and I don’t particularly care. I guess probably not, seeing as it’s a flimsy, scratched copy of a hit single by an extremely popular band, but nonetheless, feel free to taunt me in the comments box by going “Wow, you’ve got original pressing with the blue label! Have you considered taking out life insurance and investing in a fireproof safe?” or something. I’m an idiot, I’ll believe you.

Mp3s:

(Note these are CD versions of the songs, not ones ripped from my old 7”. I’ll leave you to decide whether that adds or detracts from the experience.)

Play With Fire / The Last Time

Labels: 1960s, rock n' roll, singles reviews, The Rolling Stones