In the summer of 1967, the Rolling Stones released a compilation album, in the United States only called Flowers. And this is an album that contains nine previously released tracks, so it's a kind of a greatest hits, or other things that have been released besides this kind of thing. But, there are three new things that American audiences haven't had a chance to hear yet. There's a track called My Girl which is a cover of The Temptations hit from 1964, that was recorded during the Out of Our Heads session. So recorded at a time before the Stones - remember with Aftermath, they went to all original music on that album. But before that, Out of Our Heads, they were still doing covers. And so this one, My Girl, is one that didn't make that album and was available for release here on this album Flowers. The other two are Jagger Richards songs called Ride on Baby and Sittin' on a Fence, and they were recorded during the Aftermath Session. So, you know, what you've got there are, when you look at the situation around Aftermath, we marveled at how all of a sudden the album was all the original material. Well, not only was it all original material, there were a couple of songs they had ready, they didn't use. So they actually had more material than was even released, original material, than was released with Aftermath when it first came out. Anyway, so those are the three new songs. We love You is released as a single with John Lennon and Paul McCartney sitting in, we'll get a chance to talk more about that song We Love You, in one of our Song Close Ups. There's the B-side to We Love You is Dandelion. It sounds to me and again, we'll talk about this one in the the Song Close Up too. Sounds to me an awful lot like Pet sounds. So, it has a very, very strong Beach Boys influence and interestingly, to me it sounds most like a song called Heroes and Villains by the Beach Boys. But the problem is Heroes and Villains by the Beach Boys hadn't been released yet. And so, there's another kind of instance of the Stones resonating very sympathetically with another group but not directly copying them. Anyway, We Love You and Dandelion are the singles that summer, the album of Flowers is the album that summer with three new tracks. There's a little bit of a controversy, or at least a kind of a story around the cover art on Flowers. What you see on Flowers are five flowers with stems and the pictures themselves are of each of the Rolling Stones taken from the UK cover of Aftermath. But according to bassist Bill Wyman, Mick and Keith conspired to make sure that Brian Jones' flower didn't have any leaves on its stem. They thought that was a prank, probably just what he needed at that point in his life. But nevertheless, you know, young men can be very cruel with one or another even their best friends. So anyway, the story is that the reason why Brian's flower stem doesn't have any leaves on it like the others do is because Mick and Keith did it on purpose to see if they could get his goat. So anyway, the cover art plays an interesting role but not particularly one that particularly has anything to do with the content of the tune, the tunes on the record. So anyway, their Flower's compilation, just to go through it real quickly again, did pretty well, [inaudible] , it was a US only release so there is no version of Flowers in the UK. But, number three record in the summer of 1967, the Summer of Love, the same time where we're getting the Beatles Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and All You Need is Love. This album is out there. It contains Ruby Tuesday, which had been a single, also been on the US version of Between the Buttons. Have You Seen Your Mother Baby Standing in the Shadows, which had been a single. Let's Spend the Night Together, which had been a single, and also on the US version of Between the Buttons, Lady Jane, which had been on Aftermath and was a US B-side. Out of Time, an edited version from Aftermath of that tune My Girl, The Temptations tune that we talked about just a minute. Backstreet Girl, which had been on the UK version of Between the Buttons, but not on the US version. Please Go Home, same story, had been on the UK Between the Buttons, not on the US Mother's Little Helper had been a single, had appeared in the UK on Aftermath and Take It or Leave It had been on the UK version of Aftermath but not on the American one. And then the two new tracks, Ride On Baby and Sittin' on a Fence. So, while all of the trial stuff was going on and the group was otherwise busy - actually at the time this album was released they were busy recording their Satanic Majesties Request- the way they got an album out and stayed in the public eye was to bring out this compilation in the US and to put on it a couple of extra things that hadn't been released yet, and things that hadn't been released in the US. So, that gives us a sense of what was happening in the summer of 1967. But really, the real action for us, in terms of music is this album that the Stones released in December of 1967. And that's the one we're going to turn to in the next video. And that's their Satanic Majesties Request.
