Between the Buttons

The Rolling Stones: Keith Richards (vocals, guitar); Mick Jagger (vocals); Brian Jones (guitar); Bill Wyman (bass); Charlie Watts (drums).
Recorded in 1966.
Personnel: Mick Jagger (vocals, guitar, harmonica, keyboards); Keith Richards, Brian Jones (vocals, guitar, keyboards); Bill Wyman (vocals, keyboards, synthesizer); Charlie Watts (drums).
Photographer: Gered Mankowitz.
Arranger: The Rolling Stones.
Once known as hard-core blues/R&B traditionalists, the Stones plunged deeper into the waters of original songwriting on BETWEEN THE BUTTONS, leading to a golden age of classic albums including LET IT BLEED, BEGGAR'S BANQUET, and EXILE ON MAIN STREET. In addition to scoring a double-sided smash-hit single in "Let's Spend The Night Together" backed with the baroque-pop "Ruby Tuesday," BUTTONS was also the last album produced by then-manager/svengali Andrew Loog Oldham. More importantly, the obscure songs on this tight package show the Stones coming into their own as composers.
Between the ornate orchestrations of the aforementioned "Ruby Tuesday" and Mick Jagger's Dylanesque inflections on "She Smiled Sweetly," BUTTONS found the Stones in a strata far beyond covering Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly. Although none of these developments ranks with the Beatles' contemporaneous sonic experiments, the fabs' bad-boy counterparts showed differing degrees of whimsy and sass. Examples are Ian Stewart's barrelhouse piano and Brian Jones' kazoo playing on "Cool, Calm & Collected," or the Dixieland-flavored "Something Happened To Me Yesterday."