The Rolling Stones' 1965 Fan Club Christmas Single: 'I Want To Be Your Man'

In 1965, the Rolling Stones gave their official fan club a strange, prized holiday gift: a seven-inch single of them covering a Beatles song. “I Want To Be Your Man” was written by Lennon-McCartney and originally given to the Stones as a B-side earlier that year, but this special pressing was pressed in very limited quantities and never sold in stores.

To get a copy, you had to be a paid member of the Rolling Stones Fan Club. A membership typically included newsletters and a badge, but for Christmas 1965 those members received this exclusive single in the mail. The other side was “Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind” — an original Stones track that didn’t appear on any album at the time. Because it was only sent to fan club members, original copies are now rare collectors’ items, sometimes fetching hundreds of dollars. It’s a tangible piece of the fan-club economy before the internet made exclusivity feel less personal.