Op 20 maart, maar dan in 1965, komt ‘The Last Time’ van The Rolling Stones binnen in de Veronica Top Veertig. Het nummer was geschreven door Mick Jagger en Keith Richards; in Engeland was dit het eerste nummer van hun hand dat op single verscheen. Succesvol zeker ook: het werd daar hun derde nummer 1-hit. Phil Spector is co-producer van deze Stones hit, dat in januari 1965 werd opgenomen in de studio’s van RCA Records in Hollywood.
‘The Last Time’ is geïnspireerd op het spirituele ‘Maybe the Last Time’, een nummer van de Amerikaanse gospelgroep The Staple Singers uit 1955. En deze zanggroep baseerde hun song op een traditional, die toen al meer dan 150 jaar oud was. The Stones voerden het nummer geregeld uit tijdens concerten in de jaren 1965-1967. Daarna verdween het uit hun repertoire, tot ze het opnieuw speelden tijdens de promotie tournee voor het album Bridges to Babylon in 1997 en 1998.
In een statement zegt Keith Richards over ‘The last time’: “We didn’t find it difficult to write pop songs, but it was VERY difficult – and I think Mick will agree – to write one for the Stones. It seemed to us it took months and months and in the end we came up with The Last Time, which was basically re-adapting a traditional gospel song that had been sung by the Staple Singers, but luckily the song itself goes back into the mists of time. I think I was trying to learn it on the guitar just to get the chords, sitting there playing along with the record, no gigs, nothing else to do. At least we put our own stamp on it, as the Staple Singers had done, and as many other people have before and since: they’re still singing it in churches today. It gave us something to build on to create the first song that we felt we could decently present to the band to play… The Last Time was kind of a bridge into thinking about writing for the Stones. It gave us a level of confidence; a pathway of how to do it. And once we had done that we were in the game. There was no mercy, because then we had to come up with the next one. We had entered a race without even knowing it.”
Deze Stones single behaalde de 9e plaats in Amerika en was in Engeland een nummer 1 hit. In de Veronica Top Veertig bereikte ‘The last time’ de 2e plaats.
