On February 12, 1967, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull, and art dealer Robert Fraser were arrested on drug charges after a raid on Richards’s Redlands country estate in West Wittering, England. Jagger brought a lawsuit against News of the World for libel over an article reporting on The Rolling Stones’ drug use. The newspaper had previously published an article about Scottish folk singer Donovan, who was busted shortly thereafter. The Rolling Stones went into the recording studio between the bust and trial to record a song. It was in response to the wave of support the band felt from their fans, fellow pop stars, and musicians. Let’s take a look at the story behind “We Love You” by The Rolling Stones.
We don’t care if you only love we
We don’t care if you only love we
We love you, we love you, and we hope
That you will love we too
We love they. We love they, and
We want you to love they, too
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The Beatles
Before the trials began, The Rolling Stones recorded “We Love You” at Olympic Recording Studios in June 1967. In 1990, Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman wrote in Stone Alone, “In the run-up to the court trials, we virtually dispersed, apart from recording one song: Mick, Keith, and Brian [Jones] had been warmed by the sympathetic messages from fans anxious about the crackdown on them, and Mick and Keith wrote a song by way of thanks. …. In July, John Lennon and Paul McCartney overdubbed backup vocals as a gesture of support. … The interaction between the Stones and The Beatles was always friendly, particularly since Mick and Keith and John and Paul had all embraced a hippie philosophy. In mid-June, Brian played tenor sax on a Beatles recording session for the song “You Know My Name (Look Up the Number).” Beatles experts have for 20 years been uncertain of whether it was the Stones Brian or another Brian Jones (of the Liverpool group The Undertakers) on the record. I can confirm, categorically, that it was our Brian: he said so. Paul McCartney remembers asking Brian to a Beatles session at Abbey Read in June 1967. To our surprise, he brought along a sax. I remember him turning up in this big Afghan coat at Abbey Road, and he opened up a sax case and we said, ‘We’ve got a little track here,’ and so he played sax on it. It was a crazy record, a sort of B-side. … It’s a funny sax solo—it isn’t amazingly well played, but it happened to be exactly what we wanted, a ropey sax, kind of shaky. Brian was very good like that.”
We don’t care if you hound we and
Love is all around we
Love can’t get our minds off
We love you, we love you
The Who
With the uncertainty of the coming trials, The Rolling Stones were not going to be able to release a new album anytime soon. As a show of solidarity, The Who had an emergency meeting and decided to record two Jagger and Richards originals as a tribute. They recorded “The Last Time” and “Under My Thumb” to keep their music in the public eye. The Who placed a large ad in the Evening Standard and Evening News that read, “Special Announcement – The Who consider Mick Jagger and Keith Richard have been treated as scapegoats for the drug problem, and as a protest against the grave sentences imposed on them at Chichester yesterday, The Who are issuing today the first of a series of Jagger Richards songs to keep their work before the public until they are again free to record themselves.”
The London Times
The traditionally conservative London Times published an op-ed by editor William Rees-Mogg criticizing the prosecutions of Jagger and Richards, calling them unfounded and unnecessary.
You will never win we
Your uniforms don’t fit we
We forget the place we’re in
‘Cause we love you
We love you, of course, we do
Brian Jones
The Rolling Stones were in the midst of recording Their Satanic Majesties Request. It was the summer of love, and the band was experimenting with different instrumentation and was still a year away from “Jumping Jack Flash,” where they fully embraced being a rock group. In late June 1967, Brian Jones had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. He returned to the studio when he was released and added a mellotron part to the recording. “We Love You” was released in the UK on August 18, 1967, after the outcome of the Redlands trials. A sound effect of a prison door slamming shut was added. Bill Wyman wrote, “The lawyers drove us all apart. I remember Mick asking where Brian was, and I said he’d been told not to hang out with us. He began to hang around with a horrible group of people who leeched off him, and he decayed physically, mentally, and musically. Then Brian would turn to me and ask: ‘What are the Stones doing?’ He almost didn’t consider himself a Stone anymore. I saw him in the studio, incapable of playing. Then, I knew the end had come. Because, normally, Brian’s musicianship in the studio was such that he would know if a note was a quarter-tone out of true.”
I love you, I love you
And I hope that you won’t prove wrong, too
We love you, we do, we love you, we do
Promotional Film
Peter Whitehead directed a promo clip to accompany the single release. Unfortunately, the producer of the popular UK music show Top of the Pops refused to show it. Portions of the clip were reenactments of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 trial, with bandmembers in full costume. Jones is visibly less than healthy. The BBC did not officially ban the film; they simply refused to play it. In 2022, it was remastered and released online.
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Photo by Evening News/Shutterstock
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