The Rolling Stones have amassed a treasure trove of classic songs throughout their career. Although it would be easy to play the same hit song every time they show up for a concert, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have made it a habit of pulling out their finest work from across their career, throwing in songs like ‘You Got the Silver’ alongside necessary tracks like ‘Satisfaction’. While it might work out well to have one classic tune after another, one song never came together live.
Then again, The Rolling Stones have always prided themselves as a live band. Throughout their work in the London club scene, the group would often give acts like The Beatles a run for their money in terms of sheer force onstage, becoming a favourite of kids and an absolute nightmare for any parent who heard them.
As the band began to move past their bluesy roots, though, Jagger and Richards soon developed into a songwriting institution, crafting one perfect pop song after the next on tracks like ‘As Tears Go By’ and ‘The Last Time’. Although Aftermath showed them delving into greater sonic depths than they were used to, ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ served as one of their most interesting departures.
Telling the story of a woman who overdoses on pills after running around the house all day, Jagger acts as the scolding observer, empathising with the woman’s need to avoid getting old and wondering where everything went wrong for her in the first place. Once the band started to play the song live, though, nothing came together.
Although the song features a conventional structure from around the time, the different buzzing from the guitars tended to overpower the arrangement when they played live. Rather than listening to each other, each member would often fumble over the song’s tempo, with Charlie Watts and Keith Richards playing over each other.
When speaking about the song in According to The Rolling Stones, Watts would say that the track works better as a recording than a proper live song, recalling, “We’ve often tried to perform ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ and it’s never been any good, never gelled for some reason – it’s either me not playing it right or Keith not wanting to do it like that. It’s never worked. It’s just one of those songs. We used to try it live, but it’s a bloody hard record to play.”
Although the band may have been known as a live act, the next few years would see them toying with material that would be impossible to reproduce live, such as the baroque pop that turned up on the album Between the Buttons. Once they exhausted their psychedelic side on Their Satanic Majesties Request, though, the band knew that they needed to return to their roots.
Across albums like Beggars Banquet and Sticky Fingers, the band’s reliance on live performance made for songs that felt like living entities, like the mindless jam that keeps drawing out on ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knockin’. While that era of The Stones worked better for the stage, ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ is more suited as a child of the studio.
