In 1964, a teenage Marianne Faithfull stepped into a London recording studio to lay down a song that would forever alter the course of her life. The track, handed to her by manager Andrew Oldham, was a delicate ballad penned by two young songwriters named Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Originally slated as the B-side of her debut single, the record company gambled on promoting it as the A-side—a decision that yielded Faithfull’s first chart-topping success and unexpectedly launched her into the spotlight.
It is the evening of the day, I sit and watch the children play
The song itself, initially titled “As Time Goes By,” was hastily renamed to avoid confusion with the iconic tune from Casablanca. It stands as one of the earliest collaborations between Jagger and Richards, composed at a time when their band, The Rolling Stones, was synonymous with raw blues covers. Yet this aching, string-laden piece revealed a tender side to the duo—a far cry from the rowdy image they cultivated onstage in those early years.
For the Stones’ own recording a year later, the lineup was stripped to its essentials. Mick Jagger handled vocal duties while Keith Richards layered acoustic guitar over a lush string arrangement. Remarkably, no other member of the band participated, lending the track an intimate, almost fragile quality. When The Rolling Stones performed “As Tears Go By” on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 13, 1966—alongside “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “19th Nervous Breakdown”—it marked the band’s first appearance in color on US television, a milestone that amplified the ballad’s poignant beauty.
The ballad’s delayed release in the UK speaks to the band’s strategic caution: they chose to hold back for six months rather than compete with The Beatles’ ubiquitous “Yesterday.” Eventually, it appeared as the B-side of the “19th Nervous Breakdown” single in Britain. Meanwhile, in the United States, where ballads were dominating the airwaves, the song was issued as a standalone single and quickly found an audience.
Faithfull’s version climbed to No. 9 on the UK singles chart and No. 22 on the US Hot 100, cementing her status as a formidable vocalist. Her path would soon intertwine deeply with Jagger’s: in 1966, the pair began a tumultuous three-year romance. During that time, Faithfull co-wrote “Sister Morphine” and introduced Jagger to the book that inspired “Sympathy for the Devil.” But it all started with this quiet, melancholic song—a testament to the unexpected alchemy of youthful talent and raw emotion. Few could have predicted that a B-side, entrusted to a teenage girl, would echo through the decades as one of the most tender moments in rock history.