Released
on January 20th, 1967, the UK edition of The Rolling Stones fifth
British studio album, Between the Buttons, is celebrating 55 years on
the shelves today. The US edition, featuring a slightly different song
selection and order, was issued on February 11th. It’s an album that
found The Stones in the middle of their most musically adventurous
period, largely driven by the wanderlust of founding guitarist, Brian
Jones.
This phase of the group’s career had begun with the
previous album, 1966’s Aftermath, and was synchronous with the changes
taking place among many of the pop groups of the time. Driven by
trailblazers like The Beatles, The Byrds and The Beach Boys. They were
all looking to expand their horizons and explore new musical territory,
each challenging the others to push further with every new album.
By
the time Between the Buttons went into production, Jones had almost
entirely set aside his guitar, only using it on a couple of songs for
the album. Instead, he was indulging in a variety of instruments
including organ, accordion, recorder, vibraphone, piano, harmonica,
dulcimer, kazoo, tuba, trombone & trumpet! Though the songwriting
duties remained with Jagger and Richards, Jones’ sense of exploration
drove the group into more challenging styles and arrangements, at least
temporarily shifting the focus off of strictly blues based music and
into more diverse avenues. This gives the LP a decidedly psychedelic
sheen, as is reflected in the blurry album cover photo, which uses a
primitive home-made camera filter constructed of black card, glass and
Vaseline. It was shot at 5:30 AM after an all-night recording session
by photographer Gered Mankowitz.
The first phase of recording
began early in August of 1966 in LA while the band were on tour in the
US. The group returned to the UK in September to continue work on the
album with producer Andrew Oldham, who’d handled the job for the group
up to this point. However, tensions would make this his last album with
the band. Besides the variety of styles, the music was notably more
complex, particularly with the rhythms. In addition to the core band
members, most keyboard duties were split between session musicians Jack
Nitzsche & Ian Stewart. Recording was done on 4 track systems,
which necessitated a lot of bouncing in order to do overdubs, something
the band found frustrating as the process inevitably meant sacrificing
the quality of the sound each time mixes had to be bounded down to make
way for more overdubs. Jagger griped that it all ended up sounding
muddy to him and expressed a lot of displeasure with the sound quality
of the end results.
The title of the album was something of a
mix-up caused when Charlie Watts asked the producer what the title of
the album would be. Oldham replied “between the buttons”, not as the
title, but as a turn of phrase to say that it hadn’t been decided yet.
Watts then went and created a six panel cartoon and poem with that
phrase as the title for the graphic which ended up as the back cover for
the album. From there, they decided to just let it stick as it was.
Upon
its release, it was both a commercial and critical success and has
since gone on to be considered one of the groups strongest albums. It
showcased them at the peak of their most daring creativity. Jones was
bringing a rainbow of sounds to the table and the end results were
enough to push their contemporaries to go even further with their own
music. For me, this is the prime era for the band, the pinnacle of
their powers and the ultimate expression of their musical potential.
After Jones’ departure and subsequent death, that sense of adventure
seemed to disappear from the band as they returned to more traditional
blues roots, something which would remain their status quo for the rest
of their career. But there were still a couple of “out there” records
to come with Flowers and Their Satanic Majesties Request before they’d
pull back into their comfort zone.
