Out of Our Heads (1965)

Out of Our Heads is the third studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released in two editions with different covers and track listings. In the United States, London Records released it in July 1965 as the band's fourth American album, while Decca Records released its UK edition on 24 September 1965 as the third British album.

Besides key band members singer Mick Jagger, guitarists Brian Jones and Keith Richards, bassist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts, the album contains musical contributions from former Rolling Stones member Ian Stewart. It was produced by the group's manager Andrew Loog Oldham.

As with the band's previous two albums, it consists mostly of covers of American blues, soul and rhythm and blues songs, though the group wrote some of their own material for this album (four of 12 tracks on the UK version, and six of 12 for the U.S. version). The American version contains "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," which would be the band's first number-one U.S. hit, and would go on to top the charts in 10 other countries, including the band's native UK; in 2004 it was ranked as the second greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone.

Out of Our Heads became the group's first number one on the American Billboard 200 album chart; in the UK it charted at number two.

Musical style

The majority of the songs were written and previously recorded by American rhythm and blues artists. According to music critic Richie Unterberger, the US edition largely had mid-1960s soul covers and "classic rock singles" written by the band, including "The Last Time", "Play with Fire", and "Satisfaction", that drew on the band's R&B and blues roots, but were updated to "a more guitar-based, thoroughly contemporary context". Among the soul covers were Marvin Gaye's "Hitch Hike", Solomon Burke's "Cry to Me", and Sam Cooke's "Good Times". Kent H. Benjamin of The Austin Chronicle wrote that the album is "the culmination of the Stones' early soul/R&B sound". Writing of the UK edition, AllMusic's Bruce Eder characterised it as rock and roll and R&B. The music critic Gary Mulholland writes that the UK version begins with a key proto-punk song – the band's speedy cover of "She Said Yeah" – but otherwise, the majority of the album is "a primitive template for what would later be tagged 'blue-eyed soul'", also noting that "That's How Strong My Love Is" is a sincere deep soul track.

Release and reception

Initially issued in July 1965 in the US, Out of Our Heads (featuring a shot from the same photo session that was used for the cover of 12 X 5 and The Rolling Stones No. 2) contained recordings made over six months, including the top-10 hit "The Last Time" and the worldwide number one "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" with B-sides as well as a track from the UK-only live EP Got Live If You Want It!. Six songs from it would be included on the UK version of the album. "One More Try" is an original that was not released in the UK until 1971's Stone Age. Riding the wave of "Satisfaction"'s success, Out of Our Heads became the Rolling Stones' first US number one album, eventually going platinum.

The British Out of Our Heads – with a different cover – added songs that would surface later in the US on December's Children (And Everybody's), and others that had not been released in the UK thus far (such as "Heart of Stone"), instead of the previously released live track and recent hit singles (as singles rarely featured on albums in the UK in those times). Issued that September, Out of Our Heads reached number two on the UK chart behind the Beatles' Help!. It was the Rolling Stones' last UK album to rely upon rhythm and blues covers; the forthcoming Aftermath was entirely composed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

The US edition of the album was included in Robert Christgau's "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981). In 2003, this edition was also listed at number 114 on the list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, then was re-ranked at number 116 in the 2012 revised list.

Garry Mulholland, writing retrospectively in Uncut, poses that the UK version of Out of Our Heads coheres as an album better than the US version, despite both versions being "cynical [hotchpotches] of recordings from the previous six months". He wrote of the UK version: "The covers of recent American deep soul classics that dominate showcase the band's sincere love of black balladry and dance music, while the four originals point the way, hesitantly, towards the stunning pop-art group who would soon emerge on Aftermath."

In August 2002 both the US and UK editions of Out of Our Heads were reissued in a new remastered CD and SACD digipak by ABKCO Records.

Personnel

Personnel for both the UK (Decca) and US (London) editions; track-specific attributions are given only where reliably sourced.