How the Rolling Stones' 'Come On' Cover Differed from Chuck Berry — and Why the Band Hated It

The Rolling Stones’ debut single, “Come On,” hit UK shelves in June 1964, but the band had already soured on it before the first pressing. Chuck Berry’s 1961 original is a relaxed, two-chord rocker built around his signature double-stop guitar solo and a sly vocal. The Stones sped it up, stripped away the fills, and turned it into a blunt, almost garage-punk stomp with Brian Jones’s slide guitar adding a raw, nasal edge.

Andrew Loog Oldham, their teenage manager-producer, forced the cut because he needed a quick single to capitalize on the buzz around the group. The band wanted to record “I Wanna Be Your Man” instead, but Oldham thought Berry was a safer bet. Keith Richards later called the session “a disaster” and said the two-track recording sounded “thin.” Mick Jagger was even blunter, telling an interviewer in the ’80s that the version was “rotten” and that they never played it live after the first few shows.

Despite its modest chart peak at #21 in the UK, “Come On” did what Oldham needed: it got the Stones on television and radio. But the band’s distaste for