The Rolling Stones established themselves as a live act, first and foremost. Although they ventured into creating studio masterpieces like The Beatles, the true measure of success was their ability to deliver these works to a live audience. Much of their classic material captured their raw essence in the studio, yet not everything translated seamlessly to the stage. As Charlie Watts recalled, ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ was one such track that they couldn’t just play on the fly.

By the time The Stones got around to cutting Aftermath, they were already starting to branch out into non-bluesy material. A lot of their first albums tended to be a bunch of originals scattered among cover songs, but they knew that if they were going to be put on the same level as the Lennons and McCartneys of the world, they needed to have an album to truly call their own.

While Aftermath is still a decent record regardless of whether you pick up the US or the UK pressing, ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ was definitely an oddity at the time. Jagger had already penned lyrics that were a little nastier than what the pop charts were used to all the way back to the days of ‘Satisfaction’, but this tune seems to pick up on where a track like ‘Paint It Black’ had left off.

Whereas the former was about a man wanting to have his life shrouded in darkness, ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ is the tragic tale of a woman doping herself up on pills before she ends up dying young due to an overdose. It’s not exactly family-friendly entertainment by any measure, but for The Stones’ brand of darkness, it worked just fine.

Although the group did perform the song on a handful of occasions, Watts remembered that trying to get the groove locked in was a major ordeal, saying, “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.”

From a theory perspective, there isn’t that much complexity going on, but finding out where the one beat is can be a little tricky. Since Richards’s guitar fills are incredibly simple, it feels like it should be no trouble at all, but since there’s a little bit of syncopation, there tends to be a slight hiccup in the rhythm every now and again on the final track, almost as if Watts was trying to find his place when laying down the take.

The kooky rhythm guitar also doesn’t do Watts any favours, keeping that slight bounce that feels like somewhere between rockabilly and folk-rock. Then again, that kind of off-kilter tempo actually benefits the song a lot better, as if it’s being played inside this mother’s head as she slowly loses her battle with addiction.

If nothing else, ‘Mother’s Little Helper’ may have been the first time they beat The Beatles to the punch on a song topic, taking a tale of tragedy with a mother dying young before Paul McCartney wrote about Eleanor Rigby passing away in a church all alone. A Stones victory didn’t happen that often, but they always knew how to play up darkness better than the Fab Four.