Vaudeville and Vox Continental: 'Between the Buttons' Experiments at Olympic Studios

‘Between the Buttons’ caught the Stones at their most theatrical, and nowhere is that clearer than in the music-hall pastiche of ‘Something Happened to Me Yesterday’. Recorded at Olympic Studios in early 1967, the track closes the album with a spoken-word intro that sounds like a drunken vaudeville MC, complete with trombone and a lurching, sing-along melody. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had been soaking up British music hall—think George Formby or the bonkers humor of The Goon Show—and this track is the most overt nod, almost a parody of itself before the lysergic fadeout.

Across the same sessions, ‘Ruby Tuesday’ took a completely different mood but relied on a key instrumental choice: the Vox Continental organ played by Brian Jones. That thin, wiry tone—not the usual Hammond B3—gave the ballad its wistful, almost Baroque sheen, helping the song feel like a chamber-pop oddity rather than a standard rock weepy. Brian had become obsessed with the Continental’s reedy sound after hearing it on records by the Beatles and others, and his part on ‘Ruby Tuesday’ practically defines the track’s melancholy nostalgia. Together, these two songs show the Stones stretching sideways into English eccentricities, even as their American audience expected blues and R&B.