The Rolling Stones Top 75 Countdown (#06-04)

This is the final turn in our Rolling Stones' race. The finish line is in sight. To get there, we need to hear Nos 6, 5 and 4 in our list.

At #6 is one of the Stones' campiest songs. It happens to be one of their sexiest as well.

The Stones had sung about sex a time or two before. But even by their standards, this was one blunt invitation. Let's Spend the Night Together opens with some piano from the great sideman Jack Nitzsche, with Richards playing bass. Jagger slurs his salacious my-my-my and cha-cha-cha murmurs, and the cheery group chants somehow make it all sound even more obscene – like a girl group in bluesman drag. It's one of the band's most popular hits, even though its brazen sexuality made it too hot for the Top 40 radio of 1967 (it got to Number 55). And those clicking sticks you hear in the middle? According to Andrew Loog Oldham, that's the London police officers who barged into the studio during the session. While the Stones hastily hid their goodies, he distracted the cops by asking them to perform on the track – by clicking their billy clubs.

The song was originally released by The Rolling Stones as a double A-sided single together with Ruby Tuesday in 1967. It also appeared as the opening track on the American version of their album Between the Buttons. It peaked at #1 in Germany, #2 in the Netherlands and Norway, #3 in the UK, France and Austria, #6 in Ireland and #7 in Belgium. In the US, due to the then-controversial nature of the lyrics (with its suggestion of sex) most radio stations opted to play the flip side Ruby Tuesday instead. The two songs charted separately on the US Billboard Hot 100, Let's Spend the Night Together stalling at #55 while Ruby Tuesday became a #1 hit. In April 2006, for their first-ever performance in China, authorities prohibited the group from performing the song due to its "suggestive lyrics". Here it is:

Here they are, on Top Of The Pops (1967):

It goes without saying that of all the Rolling Stones' songs, David Bowie would choose the campiest and sexiest to cover on his 1973 album Aladdin Sane:

At #5 we find what is arguably the prettiest track ever by a crew not known for "pretty" – a pastoral piano melody wrapped in chamber-music strings arranged by a pre-Led Zeppelin John Paul Jones, with child-like la-la-la's swooping through like gnomes in a playground. It's the one essential track on Satanic Majesties, a beautifully constructed piece of psychedelic pop. But the dissonant breakdown and the faintly lewd vision of a girl who "comes in colors everywhere" (a line possibly bitten off Love's She Comes in Colors) reminds you who is behind it.

She's a Rainbow was featured on the Stones' 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request and was released as a single in some territories. It peaked at #2 in the Netherlands, #3 in Switzerland, #8 in Austria, #9 in Canada and Australia, #10 in France, #13 in Belgium and #25 in the US. Here it is:

The Top 4 songs are in a class of their own. If the preceding songs were rated A, these are rated A+. Not surprisingly (for those who know me) they're among the Stones' bleakest. At #4 there's Paint It Black: it was first released as a single on 6 May 1966 and was later included as the opening track to the US version of their 1966 album, Aftermath.

From the opening sitar notes played by Brian Jones, cut by Charlie Watts' insistent drumming, to the urgent vocals by Mick Jagger, the song takes you places you wouldn't imagine going.

"We cut it as a comedy track," Richards confessed. Some comedy. Paint It, Black became one of the most flat-out frightening singles to ever hit Number One, driven by a droning sitar riff from Jones. Jagger sings about death, grief and sex ("I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes/I have to turn my head until my darkness goes") over the band's repetitive stomp. The song was originally a conventional pop tune and, according to producer Andrew Loog Oldham, not a very promising one. Wyman's roiling bass line, written on a Hammond organ, pushed the Stones in a new direction. The sound was psychedelic yet disturbing. "It was a different style to everything I'd done before," Richards said. "Maybe it was the Jew in me. It's more to me like Hava Nagila or some Gypsy lick. Maybe I picked it up from my granddad." The record company added a stray comma to the title, yet somehow the punctuation glitch made the song seem even more mysterious: Paint It, Black.

The song reached #1 in the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Australia, #2 in Germany, Ireland, Austria and Norway, #3 in Canada and Belgium, #4 in New Zealand and #8 in France.

This is the studio version:

This is a live version from TV show Ready, Steady, Go:

Here's a later, more guitar driven, live version:

There have been dozens of interesting cover versions of the song. One of my favorites is the Italian version called Tutto Nero by Caterina Caselli:

The song had a lasting effect on Pop culture. Here, it is referenced in the beautiful ballad Thirteen by Big Star:

Tomorrow is our Rolling Stones' final day. See you then!